Too many hands on my time
Too many feelings
Too many things on my mind
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m hoping to find
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m leaving behind…
One of the things I find fascinating about Rush is that as I get older I find more depth to Neil’s lyrics. And a title like “Analog Kid” that seemed so random in 1982 makes a lot of sense now.
I’d sure like to be analog for a little while.
http://buglet.rcbowen.com/photos/2003/Oct/pumpkin/
More pumpkin pictures.
I grow very very weary of the self-deprecation that happens on IRC and mailing list.
Example:
<morka_> i’m really dumb and need to set up password protected page, like with .htaccess and .htpasswd
<morka_> are there any tutorial for really dumb people like me?
ok, now what was accomplished by that? I suppose this person is trying to encourage people to help him/her, but what I find that this makes me want to avoid this person. By telling me that they are dumb, I end up thinking that I want to avoid helping them, because they are unlikely to do any of the work themselves, and I’ll end up doing it for them.
When I go into a new forum, whether it is IRC or a mailing list, I try to present myself as someone who needs help, but who has already done the requisite homework (FAQs, Google, documentation). I’m not dumb, and I suspect that morka_ isn’t dumb either. So I don’t tell people that I’m dumb. What good would that do?
This evening was the annual pumpkin carving party. As always, it was a blast. I carved a moose. And not just any moose, but the moose from the cover of my new book. I have a picture which you can see here. It’s not great. Hopefully Loren’s camera will give us a better rendition. Mine doesn’t do dark very well.
ApacheCon has a Wiki now, which will serve the same purpose as the one at OSCon (apparently the wiki itself has gone away, which is a shame). A sort of combined bulletin board, blog, discussion area, and events listing, which everyone can contribute to.
Despite the potential problems with Wikis, this is a fabulous way for folks to participate in the conference, before, during, after, and for people that are there, or not there.
Shane++ for getting this rolling.
Someone on a mailing list mentioned the Barber paradox – Wikipedia, which led me also to read about Russell’s Paradox and the Liar Paradox. All very interesting.
This morning, I witnessed an amazing display of fluid dynamics that could probably not be repeated if I tried.
As I was pouring milk on my cornflakes, the milk landed in a bowl-shaped flake, and reversed the flow of the milk up, out of the bowl, and all over the counter and floor, in such a spectacular cascade that none was making it into the bowl.
Yeah, that’s the whole story. Sorry if you were expecting more.
I’ve started reading (actualy, listening on tape) to A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket. I find his writing to be pretentious, a word which here means “uses large words, and then defines them, in order to make the readers’ parents believe that the books are educational” However, I also find them amusing, a word which here means “causing me to giggle inanely while driving.” The books are fairly addictive, a word which here means “after you’ve read one, you’ll probably want to buy the other 76 books in the series.” The books are read on tape by Mr Snicket himself, whose voice is very cacaphonic, a word which here means “ok, so hopefully by now you’ve got my point, so I don’t actually have to come over there and kill you.”
Last night I wanted to get a movie. And, darn it, it was rent one, get one free night. I hate it when that happens. So I watched Fight Club, and A Beautiful Mind.
Fight Club was one of the odder movies I’ve seen in a while. Probably the strangest since Being John Malkovitch. One of that that I know I missed stuff the first time through.
A Beautiful Mind was beautiful, and heartbreaking, as well as being a fascinating movie. John Nash is truly a fascinating man. More about him here, in his own words.
I sent a response to the “Please do my homework” note, sarcastically asking if he was asking me to do his homework. Apparently the sarcasm didn’t communicate, as he sent me a grateful response, his work so far, and a request to tell him how to do the rest of it.
For those who missed the connection, I have written Perl modules for the calculation of the day of the week based on the “doomsday” algorithm. It was primarily an academic exercise, as there are more efficient ways to do this calculation. I was just interested in the algorithm.
But the code was in Perl. My experience with assembler is mostly restricted to knowing how to spell it. I did spell it right, didn’t I?