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April 30, 2005
Some friendly advice
Never send a memory card or keychain drive through the Post Office in a letter envelope. Or, if you really must, don't send it through Minneapolis. Some piece of shit postal worker might decide that it really can't be passed up. They might carefully open your envelop, unfold the contents, take their memory card, refold and reseal everything and stick it back in the letter carrier's sack.
Just sayin'. You might just end up trying to figure out what exactly was on that card that you don't have saved anywhere else. I know that Jesus loves this theoretical postal worker too, but couldn't he love him just a little less than the rest of us?
Posted by eric at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)
April 29, 2005
Cool
I don't think anyone would dispute that Minnesota is a little on the cool side in the winter. Also that it's rare to see 'cool' conflated with "kewl" in reference to the land of ten trillion mosquitos. But these guys are trying to do something about that. They've got more "kewl" in one post than I've got on my whole site.
I've somehow ended up on the "aggregated Minnesota blogs" page, right up there with R.T. Rybak (Minneapolis mayor) and Powerline. Thanks, guys.
(Led me to an amusing post by local radio contributer. I find it a little disconcerting to have faces attached to heretofore disembodied voices, especially when they're good-looking.)
Posted by eric at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
Stuck Opportunity
When you're a rover, 60 million miles of space is easy on the wheels. Sticky Martian sand dunes, on the other hand, can be a little more problematic.
Posted by eric at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2005
Tasty Tidbits
Unlike some people, I have been too busy to blog anything of any interest.
I got my copy of Extreme Instability 2004 yesterday, and I'm torn over whether to watch it tonight or tomorrow. (Gotta at least attempt to do something special on a friday night, right?)
My copy of OS X "Tiger" hasn't shipped yet, so no "release day surprise" for me.
Good Lord, I don't know how people can smoke. I had one cigarette last night -- one -- and I've been dying all day today. That taste just does not go away, let alone the smell. What's worse is that your senses for tasting or smelling things other than the residue are shot. I couldn't tell if I was eating cereal or cardboard this morning. Sticking with cigars at Regal from now on.
Oh, last, there are dust devils on Mars. Click for the antimated "gifideo" to prove it. Our house was once hit by a dust devil strong enough to hurl deck furniture clear over the building and dump pounds of dirt into the pool (which I had to clean out). I'm also told it made a "whooshing" noise.
Uhh, yeah, like I said: blogging, interest, meh.
Posted by eric at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)
April 27, 2005
"Jonah Fix" for the Evening
I went to hear Jonah Goldberg, aka "Cookie Monster guy", speak at the U of M last night. He was invited to campus by "CFACT", which bills itself as a "conservative environmentalist" organization. Jonah did his best to convince us that such a moniker is in fact not parody and in my mind he did a pretty good job, while drinking a tremendous amount of water. (He confided: "I smoked soooo much pot before I got here." )
He told us we could either have a new speech or a good speech, but he managed to do both. It might have been rambling -- but it was interesting rambling, full of humor and first-hand knowledge . Most everyone stayed for the Q&A.
The gist of the talk was about how environmentalism has all the characteristics of a religion and how adherants often frame their arguments in that context, regardless of fact. He used a couple of examples:
How often have you heard the phrase "majestic" or "pristine" in regards to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Jonah, who went to Alaska to find out what the fuss was about, had less glamorous terms to describe the coastal plain where oil drilling would happen: "Godforsaken hellhole". No sunshine for most of the year and biblical clouds of mosquitos for the remainder. He pointed out the actual footprint of all the drilling operations that would take place amounted to less land than the University sits on, in a preserve the size of South Carolina. But -- in spite of reality, drilling in ANWR is framed in terms of a national catastrophy, the irrevocable loss of a national treasure to greedy hoardes of oilmen. This is a fantasy, a belief that's been force-fed to the American public. The caribou herds? As Jonah mentioned, the caribou-dog street vendors in Anchorage didn't seem too concerned. There are more than enough of them to go around.
He also talked about Yucca mountain, the national repository for nuclear (civil and governmental) wastes. I don't think I could possibly do justice to his rendition of one of the potential problems facing the site -- that is, the dripping of water eating through the bedrock, the storage casks, the nuclear fuel rods themselves, and then far, far down to reach the water table. The debate, he says, is whether this might happen in 10,000 years or 40,000 years -- but we have a storage problem (and many billions spent) now. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest conventional method of power generation that exists today -- but a whole generation of plants have not been developed since Three Mile Island. (When, he points out, 8-tracks were still a novelty.) Not only does coal power pollute more in terms of greenhouse gasses, but because uranium naturally exists in coal deposits burning it releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants do.
Fancy that -- more reliance on nuclear power would actually reduce the amount of radioactive material in the atmosphere. But this is not the debate that's taking place: one of the tenets many environmentalists hold dear is that nuclear = bad, and with the help of the media, the public has accepted this as fact. (*This wasn't part of the talk, incorporating parts of a slashdot thread here.)
I could go on but I'm sure if you've made it this far, you get the idea. (That and I'm not really doing the talk justice.) Lileks has some more comments about the evening, he's shorter in person than I had imagined. It's funny how you assumptions about stature derive from perceptions of status. Jonah points this out too in his post facto post. (Contrary to what Lileks says -- I do recall "Star Trek" being uttered. It's a Corner thing.)
I spent the rest of the evening "on the town" with Professor Adventure and some of his friends. Good times.
UPDATE
Some more blogging of the event:
http://martinandrade.blogspot.com/
http://brainboy.blogspot.com/
http://bantering.blogspot.com/
http://ddcya.blogspot.com/
http://pinkmonkeybird.blogspot.com/
Posted by eric at 09:27 AM | Comments (3)
April 26, 2005
It's not "Also sprach Zarathustra"...
Everyone needs a theme song, right? Rocky has "Eye of the Tiger". Donald Trump has "Money, Money, Money, Monnneeeyyyyyyy". Michael Jackson has "Sex and Candy".
I've discovered my theme song: "Atom Bomb" by "Blind Boys of Alabama". (Amazon has a clip.)
The refrain:
"Everyone seems worried
'bout that atomic bomb
But no one seems worried
about the day my lord shall come".
Gospel and Bluegrass, who knew? What's yours?
Posted by eric at 03:56 PM | Comments (2)
Dubious Date
You'll never guess what today is!
It's not Brittney and Kevin's anniversary.
It's not Hitler's birthday.
It's not the release date for Apple's OS X update either (though I hear people have started receiving their copies already.. maybe mine's in the mail).
Give up?
It's Chernobyl day, the day those of us outside of the old Soviet bloc thank our unsung nuclear engineers who chose not to build reactors with positive void coefficients. Or have them run by engineers unfamiliar with nuclear plants. Or do extremely dangerous experiments on them with all the emergency shutoff equipment disabled. Or.. you get the idea.
Posted by eric at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
An open letter to...
...the ladies in line behind me at Target last night.
Dear Shoppers,
Humans are opportunistic creatures; if our ancient ancestors happened across an abandoned beehive they would devour the sugary honeycomb faster than you could even imagine. They would eat until they were in insulin shock, delerious. This would be their last significant sugar intake for months.
We, on the other hand, have all the conveniences that modern manufacturing can provide. This means that we can always have another M&M within our grasp. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. For the rest of our lives. This is your fight, whether you chose it or not.
You see, I couldn't help but notice as you noisily unloaded bag after bag of sweet, sugary goodies: M&Ms, Double-dipped chocolate Keebler Elves, Skittles galore. I also couldn't help but notice that all of you were bearing, shall we say, excess poundage. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. That's right: sugar and doing nothing makes you fat.
Don't take my word for it! You can see the USDA's horrible new food pyramid here. Granted, it's no longer a pyramid in anything but iconography, but the list it creates after entering your age, gender, and activity level is something you might find helpful. M&Ms fall under the blandly named 'discretionary calories', because that's the way the lobbyists wanted it.
I have another suggestion for you. Whenever you feel down or bored, there's something besides sugar you can fill up that emptiness with: alcohol.
Hope this helps!
Posted by eric at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2005
Flipping Sweet or Freaking Awesome?
I can't decide which. I'm member 'o the week: Regal Social Club.
About the sweater... What can I say? If you're going to be regal you have to dress that way. My favorite part of the picture is the cord dangling from the lantern unplugged.
In celebration, here's a bonus link: Exploding Toads Baffle Experts. EXPLODING TOADS!
Posted by eric at 02:35 PM | Comments (2)
The proper usage of "Ahoy"?
Posted by eric at 12:16 AM | Comments (2)
April 22, 2005
Excellent punk band names discovered while doing my taxes:
Accelerated Death Benefits: That's fucking right on, is it not? They could have opened for Black Flag in 83. "I went to ADB last night and a skinhead kicked me in my face! I can't really blink ever again! They rule!"Worthless Securities: A punk derivative situation, sort of like Suicidal Tendencies, but with skinny white guys from Kansas. Dog-eared book on the van dashboard to impress the 15 year old girls they bed? Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.
Posted by eric at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
Et tu, Sesame Street?
A fascinating meditation on the nature of Cookie Monster in light of recent "modifications":
If the Cookie Monster is no longer a cookie monster, what is he? Why didn’t they just name him “Phil: The Monster Who Sometimes Likes to Eat a Cookie”? Conceptually, this is no different than the idiot animal rights types who want their dogs and cats to be vegans, too. Cookie Monster cannot help being a Cookie Monster any more than your tabby can stop liking fish. It is their nature to do so. Why not just declare that Big Bird is now an elm tree? If the ineffable, inexorable, immutable nature of Cookie Monster’s cookie-eating can be erased for some good cause, why should Big Bird’s birdness be safe? ... Who says that making Cookie Monster into moderate eater will improve kids' behavior anyway? Indeed, for years, Cookie Monster has devoured not only cookies, but things which merely look like cookies, including plates, Frisbees, and the moon. If Cookie Monster is so influential, why haven’t I heard more about kids going to the hospital after trying to eat plates?
Speaking of the nature of things, about how this article from AP (dissected courtesy of Powerline): Expert: Apes May Be Key to Human Nature.
The article fails to adequately describe why bonobos are "are the most like humans", aside from pointing out that they "vocalize 'as though they are conversing' and often walk upright".
Our rat terrier constantly vocalizes, most certainly intent on conversing with us. He even walks upright, given the proper persuasive goodies.
As I understand it, chimpanzees are far more brutal and combatative -- why wouldn't they make a better model for the study of human behavior? Powerline points out the obvious:
I would think that humans provide better clues to human nature than apes, and we have thousands of years of human history, not to mention six billion or so living humans, to draw on for information about human nature. But the idea of drawing conclusions about humans from observations of apes has a long history, and shows no signs of going away. Why is that? I suspect it's because some people don't like what human history and human behavior tell us about human nature.
The real cherry on the top of this article is this quote:
"Then we have the power to change it and make it any other way. We could have an ideal world, if we but learn how to do it."
I had no idea that people still believed in that sort of tripe. Seriously, do you?
Posted by eric at 03:00 PM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2005
The More Things Change...
My favorites include the "LostMyJobToday", "WomenAreSmarter", and "Mating" submissions. The rest are mostly airplanes in various states of manglement.
Posted by eric at 02:02 PM | Comments (2)
April 20, 2005
There Oughta Be A Law
Have you ever wondered what celebrities really think? Have you ever asked yourself: "What would Lorenzo Lamas do in this situation?" Or maybe: "What's Wendy Malick's opinion on automobile ownership?"
If so, here's the page for you!
This gem is from "Leeza Gibbons": "There oughta be a law that nobody should ever get Alzheimer's disease. And if it has to exist, there oughta be a law that everybody can afford their medication. Are you listening Congress? That there will be research and development to come up with cures. Are you listening?"
Hey congress, while you're working on those particular pieces of legislation maybe you can put a clause in there somewhere awarding ERIC his own personal army of Oompa-Loompas and a magical tropic-forest bio-dome with high waterfalls and rivers of Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. Optionally, depending on how far you're willing to raise the debt ceiling, I'd like a security force comprised entirely of flying monkeys and Ligers.
I've heard there's some problems with congential defects in frogs, but parading this poor, deformed creature around smacks of exploitation:
Posted by eric at 11:30 AM | Comments (3)
April 19, 2005
Beautiful Technological Pickle
I got my Mini yesterday and ever since have been suffering something of a informational-technological-existential crisis. It's not the mini's fault, it's mine. OS X is as delightful to use as I remember -- my only gripe is that the system is a little on the pokey side (especially compared to my 2.5ghz, Gig of ram PC.)
My problem now is that I have 4 PCs that I use regularly, but I want to have 1 place to store everything. Bookmarks, Documents, Music.. I don't want to have to hunt around or search for it. I can attempt to put it all on the Mini since its networking software plays very well with Windows (almost better than my laptop's copy of XP).
I don't really have time to sit down and sort all this stuff out, though.
I guess first thing's first: re-learn bash. Re-learn OS X keyboard shortcuts. Buy longer cable. Clean room. Re-arrange room to fit all stuff on the shelf.
All these things are incompatible with having an actual life. Tough being me.
Posted by eric at 10:57 PM | Comments (3)
April 18, 2005
Harmony?
Good article from Cafe Hayek:
Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let’s stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. ... To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature is doing its thing – failing to water the crops, growing bacteria within a child’s lungs – while human beings who are as ignorant of nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance, build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious efforts to solve the problems.
What the author is upset about is the moral determination that's been made: primitive cultures vs modern society. That Natural = Good and anything else = Bad. His argument is that modern progress is just as natural as any historic suffering.
I would modify the argument slightly: primitive peoples were doing what they felt most obviously addressed their problems given insufficient information. Nature certainly doesn't imply rationality and life, for the most part, is "nasty, brutish, and short". On the other hand, some of us are fortunate to be able to mitigate the nastiness with technology and medicine. One fact of life doesn't have to disparage the other to make the point that 'nature' can be a loaded term.
Posted by eric at 03:33 PM | Comments (4)
April 17, 2005
Spring Sprung Sproon
These were the last pictures of these beautiful tulips taken before the little girls living next door to the green house came out and destroyed them as part of play time. Parents? Anyone's guess.
Posted by eric at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
Lost 'n Found
I'd lost a little memory card for my camera; hardly surprising since I'm always losing track of little things. I had resigned myself to buying a replacement -- probably $50 at Best Buy. Imagine my delight when I find it under a CD. Like free cash. I'm sure Pavlov would be heartened.
I should really try this more often.
Posted by eric at 01:04 AM | Comments (4)
April 16, 2005
Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me
There's this one episode of my favorite television show, "Millennium" (from way back -- 1998), where a group of demons sit down in a coffee shop to discuss current progress in the damnation of souls they pursue. They each have their own particular style, their own way of ensuring that humans succumb to the myriad of evil in the world. Definite shades of "Screwtape Letters".
One of the demons, with overdone prosthetics jutting from his face and back, declares that the best technique he's found is to do nothing at all. "That's the beauty of modern life!" he declares, "humans now do my job for me!" The other demons scoff at this laissez-faire style, but he is content with little things like doling out traffic tickets to sap the joy out of his victim's lives.
The episode is one of my favorites; even in spite of the fact I don't own any movies and almost never sit through a movie twice, I own this set and can watch this episode over and over. It's funny, well-writen and directed, and has just enough bite to make you think. What is the thing to drag me up out of my stupor, charm me and make me proud to be doing what I'm doing? Find that, take the bite back from the devil. Wish me luck.
Posted by eric at 01:15 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
Unified ubiquitous modalities
Some coworkers and I were having a good time with this "Automatic CS Paper Generator" a few days back. The guys who developed it submitted a couple of the generated papers to a conference and had it accepted, so they were soliciting donations to cover the expense of presenting it (with a straight face). I guess the idea was just too juicy for CNN to ignore. Cover, suffice to say, has been blown.
Posted by eric at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
A little orange
It caught my eye?
Posted by eric at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
Oh, the Gala!
The "1st Annual Regal Social Club Gala" was night last, and it was a truly remarkable occasion. The lads and ladies were decked out in fineries, the speakers were scintillating and passionate; even the music was a delight.
Voting for member of the year provided some unexpected drama; a 3-way tie followed by a very, very close runoff. As happens, I took some pictures. I'll post them tonight. (Sneak peek here.)
Posted by eric at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2005
Old Girlfriend
Great story.
Posted by eric at 04:12 PM | Comments (1)
Idle code
What would happen if you were on a flight, and a la 'Airplane', the pilots die leaving no one with flight experience on board. Now let's say that for some reason the passengers, threatening you with the forks from their in-flight meals, force you to sit at the controls. Would you be able to fly, and, more importantly, land?
I like to think I would. I've logged many hours in flight sims and have even briefly flown the real deal. Pitch, yaw, roll, throttle, flaps, gear. No sudden movements. It's possible we might live, but a little bit of virtual experience does not a pilot make.
What am I talking about? Well, now consider you're a sat down at a computer in front of a pretty development environment. Handy auto-completion makes your life easy, and wizards make short work of all but the toughest task. You've never heard of a pointer in your life, but designers, defaults, and autogenerated code means your program, for the most part, works. Are you a programmer?
Real pilots start small and work their way up. You learn the basics about airspeed, lift, navigation, checklists, weather, and all the other little things that go along with flying to make the effort as riskless as possible. Even fighter pilots start learning with a single rotary engine or gliders. By the time you reach the top of your field, there's no mystery about what lies beneath. You know what's going on when you crank the control column or extend the flaps.
Likewise, programmers have to know what's going on under the hood. Pretty IDEs mask complexity, which is often a good thing. But unless you know what kind of complexity is being masked, you'll always run the risk of augering that plane into the ground, not understanding what went wrong.
Now that I'm done bloviating, what's gotten in to me? I'm just a little giddy after implementing 'atoi' and 'itoa' in straight c. They're just little helper functions that convert numbers to strings and vice versa, nothing big or original I assure you. They don't even handle negative numbers. But still... I find them delightful. One more of those details clinks into place.
int myatoi(char *string)
{
int len = strlen(string);
int retval = 0;
int pow = 1;
for (int i = len-1; i >= 0; i--, pow *= 10)
retval += (string[i] - '0') * pow;
return retval;
}
void reverse(char* string) {
int starti = 0;
int endi = strlen(string) - 1;
char buf;
while (starti < endi) {
buf = string[starti];
string[starti] = string[endi];
string[endi] = buf;
starti++;
endi--;
}
}
char* myitoa(unsigned int number, char *string, int string_length)
{
int sp = 0;
char c;
do {
c = (number % 10) + 48;
number /= 10;
string[sp++] = c;
} while (number > 0 && sp < string_length-1);
string[sp] = '\0';
reverse(string);
return string;
}
Posted by eric at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
I think this guy was in line at Cub in Northfield yesterday, causing a scene. (What else?) [from Lileks]
Posted by eric at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
"Pandora's Box"
Wrap your head around this screenshot, I dare you:
(It's real.)
Posted by eric at 11:54 PM | Comments (2)
Sunny out *tomorrow*
After being inexplicably ill the last few days, I think I've turned a corner -- in more ways than one. I'll probably write a little more when I figure out exactly what I mean by that.
There's also news today of a terrible tragedy. It will, naturally, be televised.
Posted by eric at 07:41 PM | Comments (2)
Bad Jobs
Think your job/life/tax bracket sucks? Here's some of the worst jobs in history. (From British TV)
Roman Gold Miner - Gold is extracted from seams deep beneath the earth's surface using a tiny iron pick that showers you with razor-sharp splinters that will almost certainly blind you. Fires are regularly set to speed up the gold extraction, and if you're not burnt or choked by the fire, you may be maimed or killed by the subsequent explosion as water hits the hot rock.
Lime Burner - If you really like a risky challenge, the next process could be for you. The hard cake of quicklime (calcium oxide) is taken from the kiln and added to water. It immediately reacts, producing intense heat and a shower of caustic, agony-inducing specks of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). These crumbly grains are then crushed into lime powder, which will be added to sand to make mortar. You obviously don't need safety goggles because they haven't been invented yet.
There are some other fun ones requiring experience in excrement management.
Posted by eric at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Blogs.MSDN Runtime Error
It's good to know I'm not the only one that has trouble with IIS configuration.
Posted by eric at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2005
This Creepy Old House
Saturday: beautiful. Sunday: Meh. Storms, gray. More photos on the other side of the link.
Posted by eric at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2005
State Refund = .65 * Mac Mini
I used this service to file my federal taxes last month, it took about 15 minutes to finish and was an all around great experience. But... they charged $10 to file state taxes, so I figured I'd save that and fill out the state form myself.
I tried, I really did. But after about 10 minutes in the process, when I realized I wasn't filling the form out correctly and would have to go get a new one, I caved. 5 minutes and $10 later, state taxes are done too. Never before have I so graphically illustrated to myself that money can equal laziness.
The weather is amazing right now, mid-70s, sunny. No bugs. I have to get outside and do.. something.
Posted by eric at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2005
"Please Step Through"
You know the Transportation Security Administration? The agency that hires workers to pat down white-haired grandmothers because they might be terrorists? The agency that kept one of the country's most prominent senators from boarding a plane because he presented a danger to the flight? The one that makes you do a special shoeless perp walk every time you want to make like a bird? Yeah, that's the one.
Turns out that it's one of the government's greatest accomplishments of the last 50 years. I kid you not.
Light calls the TSA "one of the federal government's greatest successes of the past half century," and likens it to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the late 1950s, which was also born amid great public excitement to serve an urgent national need.
That's right. The TSA is like NASA, the folks who put man on the damn moon. To be fair, the article is titled "TSA slated for dismantling". Good riddance.
Posted by eric at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2005
Bring in the Tanks
What is it with Texas and doomsday cults? Where is the ATF when you need it?
Posted by eric at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
http://www.ancientspear.com/mac.wmv - Macs ain't perfect neither. I particularly enjoyed the older model iMac abuse.
Bloggers Pitch Fits Over Glitches - I submit that we call this particular affliction 'Bloggered'. MSN Spaces may suck, but it's usually accessible.
May 1 Reboot - I'm not nearly of the caliber of past participants, but I think I'll have a go at this anyways. Stylesheets around here need some revamping. I especially like the built in tagging this site has. Adding a feature to movable type along those lines might be an interesting challenge.
Online Publishers Association - Generational Media Study, the Wired story that accompanies it:
The Post experience merely mirrors the results of a September study (.pdf) by the Online Publishers Association, which found that 18- to 34-year-olds are far more apt to log on to the internet (46 percent) than watch TV (35 percent), read a book (7 percent), turn on a radio (3 percent), read a newspaper (also 3 percent) or flip through a magazine (less than 1 percent).
Mugged by la Réalité - Bleak, but smacks of simple opportunism.
"Spindly demons of death... A dozen decapitations." - New England suffers Maple Tree woes.
Posted by eric at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
Sink a little messy? Clothes strewn about? Well...
Crews clean up St. Paul 'garbage house' -
St. Paul cleanup crews with pitchforks and shovels were removing garbage by the truckload Wednesday from a house in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood where police said three adults and four children had been living for years amid feces, rats and piles upon piles of garbage.According to police reports, the porch was filled to the ceiling with garbage that stank so badly that they feared that a dead body was decomposing inside. The floors were covered with garbage 2 feet deep, and animal feces were peppered about. Stairs weren't visible and had become a "ramp of garbage."
At that point, is it really worth cleaning up? Seems like the most cost-effective solution for the city is to just torch the place. I wonder how common this is.
Posted by eric at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2005
Regal
Posted by eric at 11:53 PM | Comments (5)
April 05, 2005
Really? You don't say! Is there a Cialis for Blogging?
Clearly, I'm in a blogging slump. It's not just the blog, really. I've undergone a behavioral readjustment since the test wrapped up; it preoccupied me for months, then.. Surprise! I have more time than I know what to do with.
Work is not doing it for me. No room for personal growth. No room for professional growth. No opportunity for advancement. No improvement in any of these areas for the forseeable future. I know work is work and "enjoyability" is not necessary a guarantee -- but it seems like it should at least be satisfying some deeper need, beyond that of cash flow. I could be mistaken, I've always had some trouble with expectations.
Life outside of work is not doing it for me. TV bores, computer games are getting old. Half an hour reading sci-fi in the coffee joint across the street does not a successful evening make. I'm trying and failing to make plans for my summer trip (here's a hint). I'm grateful to the weather for at least being tolerable.
This has always been my problem: I can answer tough questions with double integrals. I can write Windows Shell Add-ins in hours with no prior knowledge. I can plan and execute absurd, dangerous adventures in the desert and navigate high-country 2-tracks with aplomb. But I can't for the life of me decide what I actually want.
5 years? 10 years? What is there that I don't want to regret while I'm dying? I can't even tell you if those things matter, let alone what they are. The time change hasn't helped, for some reason my body has decided to fiercely protest. I haven't been making it to work on time, and I probably won't tomorrow.
Anyways, your moment of Zen:
Posted by eric at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)
April 04, 2005
I'm using 2MB. Whee.
According to Gmail, they're offering around 2058MB of free storage to their users, and it keeps going up. Is it just me or are they flagrantly taunting the competition at this point?
I mean, not that I'm complaining. Maybe if I could, I'd do it too.
Posted by eric at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2005
Signs of Spring
Posted by eric at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
I spent all day playing Age of Myth. Lost some games, won some games.
It feels like there are some essential questions not being asked. If only I knew what they were.
Posted by eric at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2005
TtD Part 2 Addendum
Fed Up
That's it, I'm getting a Mac. I'm serious, Windows is trapped in the stone ages compared to some of the things that OS X has standard.
Tiger introduces Spotlight, a breakthrough new desktop search technology that finds anything on your computer as quickly as you type. Search your entire system from one place: Files, emails, contacts, images, calendars and applications appear instantly.
It just so happens that Spotlight does everything that "AppRocket" does but better. I'm sure that if you felt the canned search results weren't quite as accurate as you would like, you can associate keywords ("Tags") with files... Which manages to do almost everything I had, up until now, imagined for a desktop tagging application. All that's left for me to do is buy it. (Though I'll wait until 10.4 comes standard on a mini.)
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Here's an fascinating article about the "Spatial Interface" idea that the old Mac Finder used. It made me realize that the Desktocious "popup list" feature had something seriously wrong conceptually. As designed, it pops up a list of directory paths that correspond with the tags you've entered -- instead it should be displaying the Description that you associated with the folder. You shouldn't have to remember and recognize the path of the folder at all. If no description is entered it falls back to the path name.
I'll upload the new version to display those descriptions tonight.
Technorati Tags: desktop, tagging, software
Posted by eric at 02:05 PM | Comments (1)
From a coworker
Defining Computer Terms From a "Marketing" Point of View
NEW -- It comes in different colors from the previous version.
ALL NEW -- The software is not compatible with previous versions.
ADVANCED DESIGN -- Upper management doesn't understand it.
BREAKTHROUGH -- It nearly booted on the first try.
DESIGN SIMPLICITY -- It was developed on a shoe-string budget.
FIELD TESTED -- Manufacturing doesn't have a test system.
FOOLPROOF OPERATION -- All parameters are hard coded.
FUTURISTIC -- It only runs on the next-generation supercomputer.
IT'S HERE AT LAST -- We've released a 26-week project in 48 weeks.
MAINTENANCE FREE -- It's impossible to fix.
MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS -- It compiles without errors.
PERFORMANCE PROVEN -- It works through beta test.
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED -- We'll send you another copy if it fails.
UNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE -- Nothing ever ran this slow before.
YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT -- We finally got one to work.
Posted by eric at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)