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January 31, 2005

Picture Post

Posted by eric at 08:56 PM | Comments (1)

New Work Assignment

Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?

Posted by eric at 10:26 AM | Comments (2)

January 30, 2005

Stopped by the Winter Carnival in St. Paul to see the ice sculptures before they collapse in the warm weather this week. Also, below is why photography is so hard in Minnesota in January.

Posted by eric at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2005

27 and Balmy

I asked a friend from Georgia (where I grew up) what she was up to last night. "There's an ice storm out." I have to admit I didn't believe her -- an ice storm in GA basically means that there's rain and a very small chance it might freeze on the sidewalks.

Looks like I was wrong. It's amazing there was any milk and bread left to be had.

Posted by eric at 10:54 AM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2005

Atomic Cafe

Last night, saw this collection of short films from the 40s and 50s, mushed into a unique and fascinating perspective on the birth of the Atomic age. There were lots of memorable parts, but a few in particular will stay with me: The grimace on the faces of the troops as they took part in a nuclear test. They'd set off a blast and have the troops march towards ground zero to measure the effects of radiation on infantry. Some seemed quite eager to participate, though I sincerely doubt they knew the whole story.

Another eye-opener for me was a speech Truman gave about how God himself had endowed us with the bomb. He offered a short prayer that we'd use the bomb in the "Way God sees fit, for his purposes."

Last, the monk (or so I inferred, based on the clothes) who was interviewed about the power of the H-bomb. He said that he thought it should indeed be built -- but he offered a prescient disclaimer. He thought it should be built but never used; a guardian and insurer of peace. He clearly forsaw "Mututally Assured Destruction" long before it became military policy.

Posted by eric at 12:09 PM | Comments (1)

Ouch

It bites a little when a co-worker asks you to do something and replies "I didn't expect you could." when you say you can't. It's one thing when you know someone thinks you're a moron, I'm a big boy, I can handle that. This is something different.

Posted by eric at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2005

Those days

You know how some days everything just seems to open up to you? Everything seems clear, almost like it was just waiting for you to step through the door. The things you know fall into place, and the things you think you know turn out to be correct. You go to bed smiling, saying "Yes, I can do that." or "So, it's finally my turn."

Then there are the other days. The ones where you struggle to drag yourself out of bed. Food seems less tasty, the commute has more red lights. Little things start to add up, and you begin to wonder whether or not you were quite as good as you thought. You lay down and feel like you've just been there and haven't accomplished anything in the meantime. You ask "What's the point?" and "Will it go on like this forever?"

I wonder what the difference is between those days. Is it all in your head? Is it the humidity, temperature, cloud cover outside? Has some dust mite flapped its ugly maw on the surface of your cheek, creating a minute air current that wafts into your nose and triggers a nerve impulse that richochets around createing a mood that gets you going? Karma? Fate? God smiling down on you one day, and the next dreaming up a hardship or a tedium that will bring you closer to Him?

It seems like there's some sort of natural balance happening here. If I lived my life with nothing but productive, fun, satisfaction, would I still have this problem? The benchmark would shift. I'd have to have extraordinary days just to feel good. Maybe we have to have the down days in order to fully experience the ups, or vice versa.

Just one of those days.

Posted by eric at 11:12 PM | Comments (3)

Achtung!

 

 

Build your own. Via Goof.

Posted by eric at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2005

Starfish update and more

Surprise, surprise, it's been languishing while I try to figure out some things. First is what empty role it's supposed to be filling that hasn't already been implemented elsewhere. There's a very interesting article here about the "Semantic Social Network", which means that both humans AND computers can understand the connections between people.

An example of this is RSS, which a computer can easily parse and manipulate in any way it likes. It's also a distribution mechanism that people can easily comprehend. This offers a whole host of advantages over, say, a static page on Geocities.

A computer will only be able to walk away with an understanding of the most explicit page elements, like the links. (How Google and other search engines work.) It won't have any idea that it has different sections for Bigfoot, cryptozology and animal sounds -- because the data is unstructured.

Let's add a little structure

RSS also provides a way of adding metadata to content; some blogging software lets you add categories or keywords to your posts, in addition to standard metadata elements like post date/time, author, URL, etc. For J. Vaughn's bigfoot page, you're left to sort that sort of information out for yourself.

There's another kind of structured data format that I'd like to look at, called 'FOAF' ("Friend of a friend"). It's a static XML file that is linked on your home page or blog that describes you and not just the content of your page. It holds profile information like where you live and who you are, but more importantly it provides a structured list of people you know, collaborate with, and whose blogs you read. I's like creating a profile in a social networking service (like Friendster or any of the others), but associating it with your personal web page. With tools like the FoaF Explorer, you can browse people's networks of contacts and personal information -- and so can a computer program.

So this is why I've been stalling on Starfish -- I think there may be better, simpler ways of leveraging information that's already present on blogs. Instead of creating another layer OVER what people already use, they might be inclined to try it and keep using if it's something simple they can just plug into their current pages.

People, after all, want to keep their personal pages. They have dominion there and can make them as pretty or as garish as they like. They can fill it with whatever content at whatever time or can distribute it however widely they care to.

Besides, there are already lots of sites that try to create "FriendBlogs" a la LiveJournal (e.g. Funchain) or interest-based groups (Memestreams, Eurekster). My guess is that all might be interesting to try, but the novelty will quickly fade and users will return to old habits. There's a service called Rojo trying to combine many of these things, which is kind of what I had in mind for Starfish, but on a grander scale. See this for more. (Unfortunately the trial is invite only.)

FOAF Me

So I've set up a FOAF description on this site in the meantime and I'd encourage you to do the same. The best place to start is "FOAF-a-matic", be sure to add the link tag to your blog template -- the directions spell it out.

I haven't even touched on the nifty things like autodiscovery that things like RSS and FOAF help support. Maybe I'll write a little more about that later.

Other Links
Click to the clique
Foaf Project

Posted by eric at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

Conceptual Engineer

Erik, aka Edwardo has a new blog -- and this time he swears to keep updating it. Go show him some love here: Transcendental Architect.

Posted by eric at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)

Uhh... Hotmail?

I keep my Hotmail account around as a spam sink, so every once and awhile I have to go wade through it and see if anything else has arrived. Today I'm greeted with this lovely animation (was flash):

This deserves a hearty "WTF??". Whatever the cookieman is doing, and I can think of several possibilities, why am I being subjected to it? Augh. I'm sorry I even posted it.

Posted by eric at 12:08 PM | Comments (1)

Manos: The Hands of Fate

As a long-time MST3K fan, I'd heard about whispers and hushed cries of anguish over a movie so terrible that anyone who views it will be left destitute, berift of feeling or compassion.

Last night, I saw that movie.

Basically, it boils down to this: Family gets lost, barges into creepy house to spend the night against the will of the caretaker, and then gets assimilated by some sort of pseudo-evil hilter vampire with a cadre of comatose wives. Torgo, the gimp idiot guarding the place, decides to take the stranded wife as his own (after peeping through a window). The husband gets conked on the head and tied up, and then the family is forced into the evil Master's servitude.

Do not watch this movie. It's about as coherant as the man on the street shouting that the rainbow elephants are making tea on the waffles so we'd better run for our lives. The stranded wife is about as capable as wet sheet of paper and the husband's role is limited to wander around with a flashlight.

The dialog, little that there is, is a blight on humanity. The music will have you covering your ears, especially the "haunting" "Torgo's theme". Now if you'll excuse me, I think the elephants have my tea almost done.

Posted by eric at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

Google Video Search

Google put up a search index for CC feeds from television shows, accompanied by screengrabs. I'm not sure what to make of how useful this is. I mean, so I did a search for Jon and Victoria's elimination and it came up with this helpful tidbit (from Entertainment Tonight, apparently):

>> good news for them. Bad news for the controversial couple that was eliminated from "the amazing race" last night. The question everyone is asking today -- is Jonathan just a passionate game player or an abusive spouse? Now, Dr. Phil's on the case. >> You're driving me crazy, man. I'm going to get a divorce. >> That's not the real Jonathan. He's such a pussycat. >> I don't know. I'm not Reading the map! >> So funny.

Makes for an zany "stream of consciousness"-type reading, I guess. If you leave the search box blank and just hit "Search this show", it starts to give you a full CC listing with screengrabs but only includes the first few minutes. (Maybe if there were a way to view the rest it would be kinda handy.)

Another problem is that the screengrabs often don't have anything to do with the accompanying text. It'll be interesting to see where they go with this, but for right now it's pretty much just a novelty.

Posted by eric at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

FYI, Race fans

Look like Rob and Amber from Survivor are on the next Amazing Race. Starts in March. NYP

My guess is that they won't be quite as succeptible to meltdown as Allison from "Big Brother" was. I could be wrong. Hilariously wrong.

Posted by eric at 03:27 PM | Comments (10)

Introducing...

Okay, anyone who knows me very well knows I have a hard time finishing big projects. This is why I like blogging, because it's really just a series of small, bite-sized projects that I can totally handle. I've created a new blog to write about my space and "spacesque" interests: The Cosmotron Express.

Expect science, pseudo-science, retro art, and some fiction sprinkled in. Here is but a quirky sample:

Posted by eric at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

Napoleon Dynamite

I ended up seeing this movie again last night, and I have to say that my feelings about it haven't changed. (Didn't I call it the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy? I could be imagining this.) It feels aimless and lacks any real drama, but I guess the same could be said for real life.

I can't help but like a film where the main character declares Nessie our "underwater ally", though. So much like booze, I guess the more you have the easier it is to take.

In dramatic opposition was the movie I saw the night before, City of God. It was gritty, violent, and bleak -- as well as beautifully told and filmed. Edwardo, who put it on my netflix in the first place, said he didn't get past the first part; but by then I absolutely had to find out what happened. Not for the faint of heart.

Posted by eric at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

January 22, 2005

It's Official

Blizzard out right now, not the tasty Dairy Queen variety. I'm inexplicably tempted to go wander around in it right now, I guess I've gotten my Minnesota-legs back.

I like the idea of the Blog Pet. I mean, granted, it's ridiculous and all.. but imagine bringing back the Founding Fathers or the Greek Philosophers back to dwell on your blog, making wisecracks and attempting to divine your mood into perpetuity. Maybe they could even, with some fancy DHTML, get up and WALK around, having tea or your latest post or (incorrectly) divining the elemental units of the universe? Hat tip to da Chat Noir. Too much free time at work will do that to a person.

Posted by eric at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

It is Winter after all

The radar tells me we might get socked in by snow shortly. That's fine with me, a nice coating of white might help to cover up the brown and gray everywhere.

I managed to catch "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" in Mankato last night; I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. (Tom Servo's essay on Santa and his reindeer outside of the spaceship is what did it to me. "Blitzen? Boom! Vixen? BOOM!")

Santa doesn't really end up conquering the Martians, he really just briefly tolerates them until they return him to earth. I was hoping for the dramatic demolishment of Martian society, maybe at the hands of some of those microbes Santa is invariably storing in his beard. Or maybe he would slowly decimate their culture from the inside out after he introduces them to alcohol. See, what with the Martian physiology their livers just weren't meant to handle the volumes of Eggnog and Irish whiskey that they really seem to enjoy.

Santa Claus is Irish, right?

Come to think of it, maybe not. I mean, if he were then he'd stuff rotten potatoes in the stockings of bad girls and boys, not charcoal. I wonder where I got that idea to begin with. Forget I mentioned it.

Posted by eric at 09:12 AM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2005

Popularity

Okay, look, I know I'm a rather obscure blogging outpost -- far off the beaten track. Only those who've managed to get themselves completely lost wind up here.

So I check out "Who Links To Me?" on the sidebar:

WhoLinksToMe.com has found 3 links to this site.
Google has found 38 links to this site.
Yahoo! has found 72 links to this site.
MSN Search has found -1 links to this site.

I hate you, MSN. I hate hate hate you. Poopypants. Stupidhead. Why, I heard that back in 3rd grade Mrs. Knutson found you playing doctor in the bathroom with Mary Ann, you know, that fat girl that everyone liked to make fun of? And, and, I heard you scored a -10 on the verbal portion of the SAT. What, did you spell your NAME wrong? Stupidpants.

Posted by eric at 10:04 PM | Comments (1)

So, In Review

What are the two main functions of an operating system?

The first is to extend the machine by making it appear simpler and more powerful than it actually is. This is accomplished through abstraction and various feats of memory and CPU sharing. The second is resource management -- to bring together all the disparate elements of a computer, e.g. I/O, memory, video, networking, and get them to perform in concert while accomplishing the first purpose.

I probably should take my notes elsewhere. Necessary, but not necessarily good blogging material. I made some more headway on my web-based RSS splicing application. I'll try to kick it into some sort of usable shape over the next few days.

I haven't been able to get my BF1942 fix.. for one reason or another the multiplayer just refuses to work. I'm sad. I need to kill come Nazis. Or Ruskies. I don't even care at this point.

What really has my mind boggling is a feeling of impending finality, like things are coming to a close here, for me. No, don't worry.. It's a positive thing as far as I can discern. Maybe I've been watching too much Millennium and not eating enough vegatables. Something along those lines.

Posted by eric at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)

Need I say more?

Posted by eric at 09:04 AM | Comments (2)

January 18, 2005

Rovin' my way back to you, Babe.

JPL posted the 10 Top Images of 2004 from the Mars rovers. Worth a look; they've accomplished a amazing amount considering --

• They're a hundred million miles away
• It takes up 45 minutes to communicate with them.
• They were designed to last 3 months on the surface. (1 year olds now.)
• They were launched with a crippling design defect related to the file system in their on-board memory.
• Their solar panels generate less power than required to light a 100-watt bulb. (A year in, they generate half as much as at landing.)
• The rovers are operating in temperatures from -12F to -200F.
• Mars has a propensity for eating spacecraft.

I do apologize for the title, it was funny at the time.

Posted by eric at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)

The Misunderstanding

She didn't understand why I left that afternoon, and even though I thought I did, I couldn't explain it to her. Have you ever felt the restlessness that hangs in the air before a storm? The instinctive expectation of coming violence. I could feel it coming like a hot, humid wind on the afternoon before evening thunder...

She didn't understand why I left that afternoon, and even though I thought I did, I couldn't explain it to her. Have you ever felt the restlessness that hangs in the air before a storm? The instinctive expectation of coming violence. I could feel it coming like a hot, humid wind on the afternoon before evening thunder.

The town was baking as I strolled out past the railroad tracks, out to the warehouses down towards the valley. I could hear the trucks rumbling past and the sounds of metal on metal, but I didn't stop to look. It wasn't just our disagreements that had muddled my thoughts that particular afternoon. I wondered if I were cursed, and chuckled to myself. I was like a Dark Age alchemist, wondering why his proportions of quicksilver and sulfur never created gold. Were his catalysts faulty? Were his furnaces not hot enough? Was he cursed?

Was I cursed? I smiled. Only hollow comfort could greet me in that belief. No, my problems were my own creation, my own inadequacies manifest repeatedly, each in slightly different ways.

When I reached the river valley, I found a grassy overlook and sat, still simmering in the sun. Off to the west I could see rolling prairie jutting out from the gray browns of the city. I could see cars rolling by noiselessly in the distance, glinting at me. Winking apathetically, I thought.

We'd been together for almost four years then, I was working at a manufacturing firm and she was finishing school. All relationships go through phases -- the first are easy to remember: awareness, contact, building. The beautiful ones. The exciting ones. No one wants to remember the terminal stages. We were living them out.

The swings of the relationship from noisy, acrimonious thrashing to the dull, dead quiet were played out over the course of the weeks and months prior. I couldn't concentrate at work, she couldn't concentrate at school. We'd made up more times than I could count. "This time will be different." we told each other. It's funny how hope can both spring eternal and make a liar out of you, often in the course of the same utterance.

So I sat on the bluffs, shading my eyes and trying to discern every little detail, distracting myself, envisioning what the lives were like of the people I saw. I picked out a small blue car on the opposite bank, driving north towards the newer part of town and the interstate. An overworked single mother of two, I imagined, on her way to a second job. The tan van belonged to a plumber, just getting by as business dwindled and the bills piled up. The green sedan -- speeding through a yellow light -- was a father, headed out of town. His son would be married on Saturday in a town two days drive from here. He didn't like the bride as she reminded him of the boy's mother, his ex-wife. I tried as best I could to occupy my mind, but as it often does, it returns to dwell on the very thing you're trying to avoid.

It's hard to know what you want after you discover that thing you held dear, longing for, is not what you desire at all. You were mistaken, or maybe it changed on you. Maybe the very thing you thought you wanted wasn't the yearning of your heart, but of someone else's. I bit my lip, mulling the uncertainties, tasting the sweat as it trickled over my lip. I suppose it could have been a tear.

I looked up just in time to see the sun hidden behind a building cloud. It was so thick with water that the shadow it cast was strikingly dark. I sat and watched it billow upwards before it collided with air too cold to sustain it. It spilled back down on itself, hail mixed with sheets of rain and the hungry rumblings of force not yet spent.

I stopped for groceries on my way home; I figured it might be worth the pretense of usefulness. As I walked in the door, though, I knew she was gone. The still was marked only by the beginnings of rain, and a note sat on the table. Gone back to her folks "until we can work things out". I smiled, hoping that was a little bit of her biting humor peeking through. Back before it was biting at me.

I sat back and this time imagined my life from a distance. The young upstart, stumbling at the gate. I gazed at the torrent out of the window, believing that I felt the same release as dark, laden clouds. Sometimes knowing what you want means breaking free of your comfort zone, I told myself. It means considering things you hadn't: futures, possibilities, other people. Sometimes knowing what you want means giving up what you have.

When the rain stopped, there was no rainbow, no affirmation -- but by then, I didn't need one.

Posted by eric at 09:35 AM | Comments (1)

Return of the King

I started the movie at 7:00 and the credits didn't roll until just shy of 11:30. That's some movie. Some of the additions I liked quite a bit, like the encounter with Saruman and the march Sam and Frodo were forced into in Mordor. Others I could have done without, like the whole quasi-romantic palace scene with Faromir and Aeowyn after the battle. Overall it didn't feel like they changed the movie quite as much as the other extended editions scenes had. But, it brings to mind a question: Are they really additions or are they un-subtractions?

I have to admit feeling a little guilty spending the entire evening devoted to watching a single, four-hour movie. Kind of makes me wonder if I'd be happier with my choices if there were fewer of them.

Tonight: Chapter 1 of Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems". Thus begins my (final?) academic adventure.

Posted by eric at 09:09 AM | Comments (2)

January 17, 2005

A Terrible, Horrible Mistake

Have you ever been in the middle of something fun and entertaining and had the stark realization that you were doing something very bad and unreverisible? Like the realization that maybe the money you made off of that "Girls Gone Wild" release might come back to haunt you?

I had that experience today. Amazon sent me some printer paper in this ridiculously large box, filled with those little styrofoam peanuts. Intent on keeping the box for later, I started pouring them out into a trash bag. It wasn't easy going so I decided to start scooping them with a smaller box. Things still didn't seem to be going fast enough because the chunks were so big. I decided to give the peanuts a little smush to help them along.

So I started hopping in the box. Things seemed to be smashing down nicely, until little fragments started spewing up from underfoot. I tried pouring out this heinous peanut blend and discovered, much to my horror, that the static charge starting spewing these particles all over the room as I poured.

They were getting into everything. My clothes, my mouth, my shoes, the carpet.. And the worst thing about them was that they both clung to my hand and repelled each other, so it was impossible to scoop them.

The vacuum cleaner only broke the pieces into smaller, more vicious particulates. I eventually managed to carefully suction them up individually with the hose attachment.. Total elapsed time: 45 minutes.

On the other hand, I managed to score a replacement toilet seat from the landlord for nothing. Edwardo is off the hook! (If you don't know.. you may not want to ask.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I lifted a friend's Return of the King box set... I'd better get cracking, it's like 4 hours long.

Posted by eric at 06:43 PM | Comments (2)

Sleepaway Camp 1&2

If you're like me, then there are probably things you wish you'd done that you hadn't. In the case of 80's slasher movies, there are a whole raft that of things that probably shouldn't have been done but were. "Sleepaway Camp" gives us a sparkling example of this. Take one part Friday the 13th, one part.. Oh, who am I kidding? It's just Friday the 13th with a slightly different deranged killer.

The moment the 50-gallon pot of boiling water spills onto the pedophilic camp chef, you know you've discovered a very special piece of "cinema". Suffice it to say, the film is forgettable until the end when it throws a whole slew of "WTF?" moments at you.

The sequel is much memorable, but only because it eclipses the first in gratuity and cruelty. Drawing from the other great slashers of the period, I guarantee it will make you squirm. Don't even think about eating shortly before, during, or after the film.

Some interesting factoids: Robert Earl Jones, who briefly plays the "yes, massa" kitchen helper is the estranged father of James Earl Jones, not the brother as I had initially joked. I guess this explains his demeanor: his son is making mad bank as Darth Vader and here his is, miles off of broadway and his dreams of true stardom, playing the subservient cook in a (very) bad, no-budget slasher flick.

The girl who played Angela in the first film will also be in the undoubtably titilating "Return to Sleepaway Camp", filmed last year and awaiting distribution.

Posted by eric at 09:20 AM | Comments (1)

Quite obviously, I took the weekend off. Off from worrying about work, off from playing games, off from coding. The sun came out, too, which was a nice mood-lifter.

Okay -- so I did do a little coding; enough to realize that RSS.NET has some problems producing compliant XML. Go figure.

Speaking of my lackidaisicalness: this kind of schedule boggles my mind! Mine looks something like:

MONDAY-FRIDAY
9AM-5PM
Work.

MONDAY
5:00-5:15PM
Grocery shopping.

Posted by eric at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2005

NOT good enough for government work?

Draft report suggests end for FBI’s case management app

I'd like to see some of the specs for this software. Maybe I could convince the FBI to dump $170 million on me for something that will never be used. From Yahoo:

Sen. Charles Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the possibility that the system may be scrapped is disappointing.

"I hope we haven't just been pouring money down a rat hole at taxpayers' expense," said Grassley, R-Iowa.

The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, called the FBI computer overhaul "a train wreck in slow motion" and said money alone won't solve the problem.

Grassley is a senior member of the congress and finds this news somehow surprising? That's almost as alarming than the fact the the system doesn't work.

Posted by eric at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

End 'o the Week Wrapup

So, while I was coding up Starfish in a fury last week, I ended up heading off on a testing tangent and wound up with a tool that monitors external RSS feeds then connects to your weblog and posts any new items that it finds. In particular, I tested it out on delicious and flickr feeds and I discovered that while it works, making it pretty can be a pain, to say the least. After all, here at DR it's all about appearences. I may release my test app a little later, but I'm on a BF1942 hiatus for now. Well, that and supposed to be working.

So in lieu of actual working software, here's some links!

I bet you didn't know you could go whale watching right here in the upper midwest!

Or how about listen to data files that were never meant to be listened to? Thanks to the miracle of the command line pipe operator, you can!

What about those dot com stories that came out of the boom? They always make for great reads!

The ESA finally has a successful landing! Maybe!

The possibility remains that a design flaw in Cassini's radio receiver system will hopelessly scramble the data. Engineers anticipated that signals from the wind-tossed Huygens would vary widely in frequency and strength, and thus compensated for it in the receiver's design. But they had failed to take into account frequency shifts that would also throw off the timing of the encoded data, leaving it a garbled mess.

Here's a less than flattering review of the Mini-Mac, though I could really have done without the first "Conclusion" paragraph. Ick.

Finally, Technorati starts tracking tags. Sweet.

UPDATE: Awesome!

Posted by eric at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

Counter-Terrorist Spam

My first thought: "Counter-Strike? WTF?"

Hello,

We're emailing you to let you know that with terrorism on the rise, a bunch of new jobs in law enforcement just opened up. We need smart and good people, like yourself, to join the team to protect America. If you're interested, we recommend that you sign up to get some information on how to get started in a Criminal Justice education program:

http://www.anyshipping.com/join_the_force/3292/26904237/nss548r7635s

If you're already set in your current career, maybe you could pass this message on to someone else who is down on their luck, but is interested in keeping our land free from fear. This should be somebody you trust!

- Eric "Bull" Sanders
Counter-Terrorism Recruiter

"Somebody I trust?" On the off chance that someone I refer to this web page to become a counter-terrorism operative turns out to be a jihadist?

Posted by eric at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

My Onion Horoscope

Scorpio: (Oct. 24—Nov. 21)
There will soon come a time when your happiness depends on where and whether an enormous man catches a ball.

Posted by eric at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

Bombs Over Denver!

Civil Defense booklet from 1951

Link

Posted by eric at 11:06 AM

Purell

So, I got some of this instant hand sanitizer stuff because washing my hands meant feeling like I was scraping off a good portion of epidermis. It's just ethyl alcohol -- and I like the way it smells.

So I bring in a little bottle of the stuff to work. I'd peeled the label off out of some sort of misguided habit. As it was sitting on my desk, I'm looking at it... and I realize that it distinctly resembles a bottle of astroglide. Err, whoops.

It's hidden in my desk now.

The office manager is going around asking if her new hair style makes her look younger. This does not bode well for my day.

Posted by eric at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

Yeah, about that

So I wanted to change my life and all.. But I reinstalled my ATI drivers and all of the sudden Battlefield 1942 is working again. So later, big world, I have some Nazis to kill. That's okay, I really didn't have the guts to begin with.

Posted by eric at 09:40 PM | Comments (0)

Wee Bit Bored

I found another panorama just laying around, waiting to be stitched together. It's of "Black Canyon of the Gunnison" National Park, outside of Grand Junction, CO. It's an amazing sight, but a little bit scary when you realize that the cliff you're peering over goes straight down for hundreds or thousands of feet. (Heads up, final pano is 3500 pixels wide.)

I also put together a few 1280x1024 wallpapers from the scene. Here and here.

Posted by eric at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

Pictures of someplace warm to get me ready for the minus 20s.

Posted by eric at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

Taggregator

I like this: http://oddiophile.com/taggregator/. Maybe Starfish would be better off trimmed down to the bare essentials like this.

Posted by eric at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

My Baby's Got a Secret

This NYT piece can't seem to decide whether or not secrets are a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand:

The very act of trying to suppress the information creates a kind of rebound effect, causing thoughts of an affair, late-night excursions or an undisclosed debt to flood the consciousness, especially when a person who would be harmed by disclosure of the secret is nearby

And on the other:

"Contrary to what many people assume," Dr. Kwawer said, "quite often a secret life can bring a more lively, more intimate, more energized part of themselves out of the dark."

It skims over the mundane secrets we might keep, like "I really enjoy UPN" or "I'd take Yanni over Springsteen anytime". I can understand the reasons for these. Social benefits (do you really need to point out how awful that dress looks?) and even biological ones (I'll just not mention this delightful berry bush to Og over there). Instead, it looks at the ones that lead people to live double lives.

But, in explaining why such elaborate deception comes about, the piece begins to devolve into comedy. Unsurprisingly, the blame falls at the feet of the parents. About the doctor with a wife and daughter who began sneaking off at night, frequenting prostitutes and even fighting their pimps:

The pediatrician treated by Dr. Aronson, for example, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in which his mother frequently and disapprovingly compared him to his uncle, who was a rogue and a drinker.

Oh, really? That starts to explain why you're beating pimps at 3AM. It's not your fault. Your mother repressed it right into you -- and besides, the was the guy was asking for it. What right does he have to complain you've been hogging his girls? You're adults. You do want you want.

My favorite part, though, was this:

In another, psychologists at Harvard found that they could increase the attraction between male and female strangers simply by encouraging them to play footsie as part of a lab experiment.

Not sure what that has to do with keeping secrets -- but I'm curious about how the study played out! Did they get directions on playing footsie? How did they read? I can imagine it now...

"You will be taking part in a controlled psychological experiment. Have a seat at the table in room 115A. There you will be introduced to a person you have not met before. You will work on a simple puzzle together. You will be playing footsie. Play gently. Do not discuss anything that happens underneath the table. Afterwards, we will provide you with forms to rate your level of attraction to the stranger. Thank you."

Posted by eric at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)

"I hate to bother you..."

I got a call at work yesterday, from my mother. She and I, for obvious reasons, share some mannerisms and I could tell she was couching. "Gizmo ate half a chocolate bar last night." Uh oh. Gizmo is our rat terrier and doesn't weigh more than about 15 pounds. Our previous rat terrier, Cleo, had surrepticiously gotten into a candy stash and developed a diabetic disorder.

"We had to run him to Golden Valley at 10 last night." They had to inject him with something and try to get him to throw up. I wasn't really keen on the details. "Is he okay??" I ask, fearing the worst.

"Oh, yeah, he's been doing better today. It was a long night, but he brought me his toy before I left." I couldn't tell if she had been stringing me along on purpose or subconsciously, just because it makes a better story.

What was the point of this story? It occured to me last night that for all the news about the tsunami and the loss of life that went with it, I developed a bigger knot in my stomach hearing about Gizmo than I had about any of the disaster victims. Which begins to explain this.

Posted by eric at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2005

Only too true

Randall from Futurepundit leaves this bit of Commentpunditry:

My advice is to drop the MST3K fan requirement for the woman.

Unfortunately for my aspirations, this is totally true. MST3K is a guy thing for many of the same reasons that but a single girl shows up for this thing. (Page is unfortunately lacking in info.. It's basically kung-fu and excessive amounts of smoke as you can probably ascertain.)

MST3K appreciation, on the other hand, indicates a certain amount of subsumed pop-culture awareness and an offbeat sense of humor that I find endearing. Okay, so I'm making excuses because I don't want to go to any form of opera.

I just had a revelation: maybe I'm not that classy myself! I would investigate further but I'm afraid that would only confirm my suspicions. I am, after all, mostly content to sit at home and code up ASP.NET pages on evenings during the weekend...

Posted by eric at 11:17 PM | Comments (2)

Going the Distance at Work

Normally work is not too exciting. Code a little, file bug reports, fill out timesheets, et. al.

Tomorrow, though, is the beginning of a long demo trip to DC for equipment and bosses. Without adequate preparation. Last I heard, plans were to work through the night putting equipment together until the plane leaves at 5:30AM.

Walking out the door at 5:30 this evening, I felt maybe a little guilty. After all, I was the first one leaving. But my work was done. I was sitting on my hands anyways. Did they really expect me to stay for moral support or something?

Guilt tripped, I went back at 7:00. I checked again. My boss suggested I take the 12-5 pacing around shift. I told him if anything at all were to come up, feel free to call. The last thing they want is an Eric there past 9:30. I was a little sleep drived during the all-weekend lan party and was a total jerk to my friends. I'm sure poor coworkers would fair even worse.

I do wish them luck in whatever it is they have to assemble. I need some sleep.

Posted by eric at 11:10 PM | Comments (0)

Cryptically scrawled on the board in the meeting room: lavanthian. Not in the dictionary. Anyone have any ideas?

Posted by eric at 12:40 PM | Comments (3)

January 10, 2005

A Simple Plan

So I've been mulling over the quote here about not succeeding if you don't know what success looks like. I'm terrible at defining success. A plan might help since a plan is just defining success in small increments, but I'm bad at planning too. I know what I like when I see it, but much like monkeys pounding away trying to be playwrights, it's a crapshoot.

I'd really rather not have my life be determined by wannabe monkey-playwrights. Now, I've never made a New-Year's resolution in my life, I think they're impulsive and manufactured to drive up membership at health clubs. That said, the beginning of the year is as good a time was any to take care of this sort of planning. Makes the bookkeeping easier.

1. Finish the degree.
   It's one test away, high time this undergraduate thing is put to sleep.
2. Find a classy lady.
   This one's long overdue. Non-smokers, thanks. Must appreciate Mystery Science Theater 3000 and not scoff if I begin a sentance "So, I was watching Nova last night...". I am told that this variety of female exists but need to further investigate the supporting evidence.
3. Find a better job.
   This one is (theoretically) dependant on the degree. Need a job where the products are well-defined and software development practices don't resemble a combination of the aforementioned monkeys and crossed fingers.
4. Find a church that fits.
   Preferably where the people are both friendly AND will speak to you. Membership must also not neatly coincide with that of an old folk's home.
5. Release a piece of software that reaches 10,000 downloads.
   If I'm shooting for pie in the sky, it might as well be tasty.
6. See an ocean.
   Atlantic, Pacific, it matters not. The midwest has waves of grain and drifts of snow, but both lack the simple ability to plop down on a beach and build a sand castle in the sun.

Right. So those are the endpoints. Now I just need to do some imaginative interpolation between here and there. It'll be easy, right? Right??

Posted by eric at 11:21 PM | Comments (1)

Starfish Update

I'm done with the New User and New Channel dialogs, as well as a small portion of the Main page. Got user authentication out of the way and modularized some of the javascript.

What I'm saying is, woot! Progress. I hope to have something akin to an open house here by the weekend. I've been told that LiveJournal as something like feed groupings where you can subscribe to friend's feeds and have them fed onto one page. I may have to set up an account and investigate a little further. (I certainly don't want to try and compete with LJ... or necessarily attract that audience!)

I've built this "Interests" system that I'd like to resemble del.icio.us's tags somewhat. You can tag a channel with a particular interest or grouping of interests. I'd like to set it up so that for each interest, you can get a feed of all the channels that center around it.

Mmmm... del.icio.us, flickr, and netflix "integration" for each user. Just give your username for each service and Starfish grabs the feeds and starts accumulating. I figure it could also be used to form "favorite users" or friend's feeds.

Posted by eric at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

I'm still not sure who that first dude was. (Or what was the relevance of the girl's elf ears.) However, I did casually re-flash my wireless router's firmware Saturday -- my score may be higher if stuff like that were taken in account.

Posted by eric at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

I've never heard anyone accuse Randy Moss of having any class.

But the game announcers made it sound as though he'd snatched an infant from its mother and spiked it on the cold, hard ground. Or worse yet, shown us a nipple.

Posted by eric at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

Is it too early to really be missing the outdoors? It's only January in Minnesota, months left before I can really venture back out.

Posted by eric at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

MT-Close

I finally figured out why mt-close.cgi (and mt-close2.cgi) were returning header errors and not running. For some reason, the code used to locate the MT perl module directory was wrong. Code was:

if ($@ =~ m!(.*[/\\])!) {
    $MT_DIR = $1;
} else {
    $MT_DIR = './';
}

The $@ needed to be changed to $0. Go figure. All my older comments are closed, and I installed a 'open proxy' blacklister to hopefully cut down on the spam.

Posted by eric at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)

Droppin' Some Titles

Finally, someone else who liked "Around the Sun"! I haven't come close to getting tired of it. In particular, "Boy in the Well" and "Aftermath" are my favorities.

As a side note, I usually don't buy DVDs -- but I'm making an exception for this set. I've been waiting since some of these episodes aired in 97 & 98 to see them again. In particular, "Somehow Satan Got Behind Me", "The Curse of Frank Black" and "Luminary" were some of the most memorable and enjoyable episodes of any show I've watched.

Waiting for the Viking's season to end, still. It's like a bad movie that's gone on for too long, has no sense of purpose or direction, and doesn't know how to stop. Or pretty much any chick flick, except that we know the protagonist will end up lonely and disappointed on the curb.

Posted by eric at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

LAN Party, Day 2

Probably some more light-to-non-existant posting. Look outside, though, it's a perfect ugly day to not post.

Posted by eric at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

The Catcher

"Play ballllll!"

Before I begin, I'd like to point out that this movie is rich in symbolism and, as such, may be prone to misinterpretation or misunderstanding. On the surface is appears to be a simple, grim, slasher flick. I think it worthwhile to rebut this perception.

Take, for example, the murder of the sportcaster: the murderer takes great care to lay him in a quasi-crufix, arms uplifted to demarkate the base lines. This is obviously a macabre pun on the word "foul"! It also shows a depth of character, even in a depraved maniac, that many may initially miss.

Another good example is that of "Pop"'s murder. He's strung up and pelted with baseballs from the pitching machine. Granted, this not particularly original.

However, the last ball stuffs his mouth like a pig -- an obvious reference to the way Major League Baseball is stuffing its fans through club monetary descrepancies and the lack of a salary cap.

Indeed, the entire film seems to be railing against the inequitites ingrained in the MLB culture. A solitary catcher, forced into a corner, fights back the only way he knows how: brutally slaying more successful players as well as the management. The subplot of possible supernatural possession also is suggestive of the duality of this haves versus the have nots.

Some people may decry this film as "low-budget", "contrived", "full of holes", or "excreable parade of washed-up nobodies", but I dismiss these criticisms as a lack of imagination. After all, we know it's not career performance, "It's only about your last inning stats."

Posted by eric at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)

I made those Starfish Wiki updates I was blathering about earlier. I've also discovered a great web-based text editor to include.. It's way better than Movable Type's! Click the yellow guy on the right.

Posted by eric at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

Navigational Blindness

So, as I was telling my sister the other day, I'm kind of on a philosophical "Is what you see really what you get?" kick right now. Media control, appearence vs. reality, that sort of thing. So let's do an experiment. (BTW - This will not work if you've been exposed to it before.)

There is a video you need to watch, but first some directions. The video shows a group of people passing two basketballs back and forth. The people are moving around and sometimes block your view of the balls. Your mission is to count the number of passes that are made between the people. It's not easy, so you'll have to concentrate.

Ok, here's the video. It's a 7MB java applet, so you may have to be patient. Watch it, I'll wait.

I counted 29 passes. So what, you say? Well, for "The Rest of the Story", highlight the text that's hidden below. (But not until you've watched the video!)

Did you notice anything unusual occur during the video?

I sure didn't... But now, go back and watch the video again. Don't count the balls -- in fact, ignore them completely. Look at the people.

You'll see someone in a gorilla suit walk into the group of people, thump his chest, and walk out. I'm not joking. I saw this bit on a tv program once, and I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe that I'd missed something so obvious.

This is the same principle of distraction that makes magic work. Human focus can be dogged but can also make you blind to anything else that's happening (even things, literally, in front of your face). What kinds of questions does this raise about our perceptions of reality in more general terms? What sort of obvious stuff have I missed? What have you missed?

I suppose I should get back to work.

Posted by eric at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

More choice = Less Happiness? Unfortunately, the author takes an interesting concept and tries to shoehorn it into an argument for wealth redistribution.

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary - Good article on programming as a practice and also as a style of life. Best line (at least, for my current situation): If there is not crisp definition of success, you will not succeed.

Posted by eric at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Okay, yeah: sucks

The number of comment spams I'm getting daily is starting to approach the total number of comments on the blog (all of them). Bah.

So this is for my benefit: Six Apart Guide to Combatting Comment Spam

Posted by eric at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

Did you click on the fields? Hah! Yes, it's just a cruel, cruel teaser. I'm working on the signup stuff now, having had surprisingly good luck integrating a nifty XMLHttpRequest feature a la Google Suggest.

Posted by eric at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)

The Starfish Upgrade

So I was looking over my Starfish design docs yesterday and realized it was basically a Bloglines with self-publishing and not a whole lot more. So, I've decided to upgrade the spec and make it a little more interesting and group-oriented.

I want to include 'interest ranking'. Sort of like a preferences matching scheme -- for both other users and individual channels. To make it more interactive, it would be fun to let the users define new interests if they don't find what they like in the interest listing. So here's a little example of what I'm talking about:

User Joe signs up and logs in for the first time. He doesn't have any interests defined or Channels added. So, he's prompted to add some. He picks 'Underwater basking weaving' and 'Skydiving', but finds that his primary hobby, Water polo, isn't in the list. So, he adds it (provisionally - has to be approved in order to filter out spam entries).

Now, he has some Channels suggested to him in two lists. The first is 'Matched Channels' which is created by looking at his interests and looking at the Channel interests defined by the Channel moderator. The second is a listed of 'Channels through Matched Users', which looks at all the members in the system and discovers who else likes similar things. It then looks at their subscribed channels and suggests those to Joe. I could play with the weighting of the scheme so that more common topics are weighted more heavily than oddball ones; might improve results but I really couldn't say without experimentation.

Seems to me this sort of interest-weighting might encourage participation. I would wager a guess that it's more likely you'll participate in something when it's suggested to you as opposed to dropping in from the blue.

This increases the complexity of the system.. A little! I'll update the wiki a little later on today with some implementation details. Thoughts, anyone?

Posted by eric at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

Comment Spam

It's nice to see the spam branching out into interests besides debt consolidation and online poker. Now I'm getting posts for the ambiguously-named "phentermine" and that old standby Viagra. Huzzah and kudos! It's not like I didn't TRY to install mt-close2, but all I get are malformed reponse header errors.

Oh yes! Someone else noticed. The comments are particularly great.

An MTV reality spawned brunette marketing vector for the sexualized prepubesent - recently embroiled in a national lip fiasco- will perform for 70,000 football crazed, testosterone hyped men congregated for the sole purpose of cheering on other even more testostermone laden padded men in thier attempt to physically disassemble each other.

However, it appears the Orange Bowl promoter-type-people don't get it:

Orange Bowl representatives said they were pleased with Simpson's performance and feel the booing was just backlash from her "Saturday Night Live" lip synching incident.

Posted by eric at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

More Starfish

I had a change of heart about what I want to do with Starfish on the drive home from Mankato; suffice it to say it will make it much more social and hopefully more interesting. I'll off to mull it over, maybe watch some snow fall out the window. It's awful pretty out right now. (Unless you slip and break something!)

Posted by eric at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

What passes for half-time entertainment

Okay -- Before I actually give you the link, there are a few things I need to warn you of. This link is not safe for children. This link is not safe for adults with hyperactive gag reflexes or women who are pregnant or may become pregnant. The clickee becomes totally responsible for his or her actions once the mouse button goes down. (Or, to be more precise, comes back up.)

All that said, there is a payoff at the end. A big payoff. IF you can suffer through the entire thing, it all becomes worthwhile. So, I'd like to present Ashlee Simpson being booed at the Orange Bowl. At the end of her performance, there's a delicious moment of silence. Then the boos. (One guy: "You suck!")

Believe it or not, this clip has actually helped restore some of my faith in humanity. People do seem to realize that they're being force-fed -- and in this case force-fed the craptacular stylings of a talentless puppet. MooCow is totally outnumbered.

Posted by eric at 01:19 PM | Comments (1)

Sticks and Stones

On one of these remote Indonesian islands, the government thought that this indigenous tribe had been entirely wiped out by the Tsunami. An aid helicopter went to see if there were any survivors, and much to their surprise they were pelted with wooden arrows. Seems the natives had survived after all and weren't too pleased about being buzzed.

I don't remember where I heard this story, but that doesn't detract from its awesomeness. (NPR?)

(This article briefly mentions it: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3961364)

Posted by eric at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

I have lots more of these to dump out, too.

Posted by eric at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

I really need to post some more pictures.

Posted by eric at 04:40 PM

1 Year

It just occured to me, sitting here, staring at the wall of my cube: I've been at my job for exactly a year today. What does this mean, exactly?

I don't know.. I think it's trying to make something out of nothing. It means I'm a year older and a year "wiser". I'm a little more capable as a software developer, and I have a slew of nice things for the first time in my life. Still don't know where I want to be in the future, or even if I'll have the patience for this job in five years.

Everything could change, we'll see.

Posted by eric at 11:48 AM | Comments (1)

Another CHICK TRACK!

Indescribably hilarious. And disturbing. What's up with the eye patch? This is belief without tact or empathy -- scorched earth evangelism.

Posted by eric at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

One Expensive Fireball

Luckily, the pilot escaped, but a $350 million dollar aircraft didn't. Take the $250m number the article lists and it's at LEAST $350m given the fact it's a test copy.

If you were to line two or three of these up on a tarmac, they would represent the individual annual budget shortfalls of all but the 3 or 4 largest states in the union. (And larger than the TOTAL annual budget of many!)

Posted by eric at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

Intelligence and Marriagibility

I do apologize for the John Stamos and Olsen Twins in the post below -- the creepiness had to be spread around. I really don't care how you felt about "Full House", this grim reunion can bode no well for the people of the earth. And those glasses..

From Futurepundit:

Do Men Want Dumber Women As Mates Or Are Smart Women Too Choosy?

Social scientists at the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Britain tested the IQs of 900 boys and girls at the age of 11 and then checked on their rates of marriage 40 years later. They found that higher IQ increases the chances a man will marry but high IQ causes an even greater decrease in the chances that a woman will marry.

“The finding that IQ in early life appears to be associated with the likelihood to marry is important because factors in childhood may determine a person’s marital status in adulthood, which may in turn influence future health and mortality,” says the study, to appear in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences.

For boys, there is a 35% increase in the likelihood of marriage for each 16-point rise in IQ. For girls, there is a 40% drop for each 16-point increase.

Ouch. Parker does some speculation about causes and also has a link to an interesting article about the Blue/Red baby gap.

There's also this rather disheartening table of abortion statistics by state on iSteve's site. Ignoring DC, since it ALWAYS skews statistics, over a third of pregnancies in New York state end in abortions? I had no concept that the rates were that high. Even in Minnesota, the rate is almost 20%.

At least I'm attempting to pull my head out of the sand...

Posted by eric at 09:00 AM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2005

Look hard, then look within yourself

... and fear for the future. They're coming for you. They're coming for all of us. (From Yahoo)

Posted by eric at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)

Monday, Monday

Back to the daily grind. The coal mine. The Bunny Ranch, if you will, just without the prostitution.

Wired has an article up about the internet you don't know about. Doesn't matter how many P2P clients you have on your machine or how much warez you've downloaded lately, there's another layer to the internet you just don't know about. How do I know? If you're reading this page, you're probably a square.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html

Oh, what else? Try on this piece from the Seattle Times describing how technology manages to make us more productive AND more stupid at the same time. I know that trying to multi-task just never works out too well, but I feel compelled to do it anyways. I do wonder about the unknown implications of our new IM-SMS-HOTMAIL-BLOG-CELL-TV lifestyles. What's the affect psychologically? What's the cumulative effect on a society?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2004/1128/cover.html

Top 'o the year, I'm off to fill out some tax forms and sign up for an IRA.

Posted by eric at 04:50 PM | Comments (1)

California gives up on parents

From The Modesto Bee:

Saturday, laws went into effect to restrict kids from riding scooters or riding in the front seat of a car. They'll also be kept out of tanning salons and face costly fines for drag racing in the streets.

But they will face fines for playing with toy and BB guns that look too much like the real thing, or e-mailing pirated music and movies to friends.

California already has the nation's toughest helmet law for kids on bikes and skateboards, and calorie-laden soda pop was banned in elementary and junior high schools last year.

...

Children under 14 are banned from using tanning salons, unless they have a doctor's note, and those 14 to 18 need parental permission to receive a tan.

Believe it: If you're under 18 in CA you can no longer just pay to lay on a tanning bed, you have to pay AND forge your parent's signature. Need an abortion? Well, I think we can cover that. No, I don't see any need to involve the parents -- they obviously don't know what they're doing in the first place.

There has to be a name for this sort of cycle of government involvement -- the more responsibility the government takes on, the more it needs to involve itself in the day-to-day lives of the people. Example: If the State of California ends up paying for the treatment of skin cancer through medical programs, it sees the need to control the behavior of people who might risk exposure to it.

Someone, quick, I need a good name for this cycle!

Posted by eric at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

Joel on Software has some helpful advice for future CS graduates.

The moral of the story is that computer science is not the same as software development. If you're really really lucky, your school might have a decent software development curriculum, although, they might not, because elite schools think that teaching practical skills is better left to the technical-vocational institutes and the prison rehabilitation programs.

He did go to Yale, so you shouldn't surprised to find some "helpful" tidbits like: "Look for the 400-level courses with Practicum in the name." and "Yes, there are a bunch of out of work IT people making a lot of noise about how long they've been out of work, but you know what? At the risk of pissing them off, really good programmers do have jobs."

Posted by eric at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

Welcome Back

Bumper Sticker:

My Other Ride Is
Your Girlfriend

Poking fun at wishful-thinking and insecure middle-aged men? Random, brash insult? Obnoxious enough to make people indignant and write about it on their elitist weblogs? Ford Fiesta?

Check.

Posted by eric at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2005

The Storm

Strange winter weather out tonight.. Lightning, clear shards of ice falling from the sky. Then, deathly silence. Nobody was driving. So, you step out and are greeted with a feeling like you've stepped to the edge of a deep, wide canyon. No echoes. Creepy.

I worked on actual Starfish code today and have come up with a nifty RSS reader for interfacing with outside sites. It looks quite promising, and I'm letting it scan a handful of feeds tonight to see if it works correctly. I need to add Atom support so I can scan my own site...

UPDATE: It's alive! Muhahaha. Naturally, that leaves a whole slew of new details that have to be worked out. It's still a simple RSS feed reader in a few hour's worth of work, so I'm a little proud of myself. (So I got a library that does the heavy lifting.. whatever.)

Posted by eric at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)