Jan 2008
- Jan 1
- separate spheres
If things had gone differently, I might've actually become a computer programmer. Although it's questionable as to whether I would've survived such a decision.
· Read more… - Jan 1
- beginnings
If there are no endings, can there be beginnings?
· Read more… - Jan 1
- how PHP is destroying Rails
From Zed Shaw's rant as to why the Ruby on Rails community sucks:
· Read more… - Jan 1
- passion (and the lack thereof)
I suppose that dull, drear apathy is preferable to suicidal depression, but I keep thinking that there's definitely something missing from my life. The apathy, I'm sure, is merely a symptom, and not the thing itself. (And I guess I've become some sort of expert about what things aren't, although I'm still pretty sucky at telling what things are.)
· Read more… - Jan 2
- radiohead "videotape"
The underlying, repeating, melodic theme—four notes descending down the scale, the second and the third exactly the same, the last one barely audible at times—arrested my attention as I skidded to a stop at the end of the offramp from the 805, and I found myself mesmerized. I couldn't really catch any of the lyrics, but reading them here, I find them disturbingly apt for my frame of mind.
· Read more… - Jan 2
- time: out of sync, in a daze
I don't really believe that it's 2008. The number looks ludicrous. I'm disappointed that we don't have regular shuttle service to Mars and Europa. That alien species haven't tried to contact us. That we don't have flying cars.
· Read more… - Jan 3
- woot! · Read more…
- Jan 4
- i've got obama fever
The blogosphere is a-twitter with Barack's unlooked-for win in Iowa last night. Obama may not be as progressive as Edwards, and on certain positions he is definitely to the right of where I stand, but symbolically speaking, he is ideal.
· Read more… - Jan 5
- remembering my ties to the body of christ
Since 2001, I've been struggling with a crisis of faith. I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church as a baby, participated in the Eucharist, and was Confirmed. I went to a parochial elementary school and junior high. I went to a high school that is run by the Jesuits. In college, and in the beginning of med school, I participated in the Catholic Community.
· Read more… - Jan 5
- scrawling on the wall
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- Jan 6
- markets
I stumbled upon this debate about the future of markets. Part of the problem is that “market” is so poorly defined. Instead of digging through centuries of capitalist tracts or recycling paleomarxism, my understanding of markets is that they are simply the mechanism by which transactions of resources, manufactured goods, or financial instruments take place. Anywhere there is supply and demand for a particular thing, that creates a market.
· Read more… - Jan 8
- nelly furtado "wait for you"
I'm sure I've heard this song before, but it felt like it was the first time as I drove away from the ocean and made my way onto the freeway.
· Read more… - Jan 10
- john kerry endorses barack obama
I wasn't expecting this.
· Read more… - Jan 10
- social progressive/fiscal conservative
I like to think I take a progressive stance on several issues: for example, universal health care, women's rights for choice, same sex marriage. I want us out of Iraq now. I want us to work on alternative fuels, and to add stricter regulations to the consumption of hydrocarbons. On the other hand, I'm all for a small government. Maybe Reagan successfully brainwashed me as a child. If I lived during the time of the foundation of the Republic (and I wasn't a person-of-color), I might have been a Whig. I'm all for weak executives, paralyzed/gridlocked legislators, and strict constructionists. Let the people in power play their futile tug-of-wars. It will let the rest of us get down to business. To me, states' rights are paramount, and local politics are key.
· Read more… - Jan 12
- lost in time and space
‘“Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?”’
· Read more… - Jan 13
- plans
It's 3 a.m. Usually not the best time for making plans and changing directions.
· Read more… - Jan 18
- to wish impossible things
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- Jan 19
- loneliness
Loneliness is both painful to experience and potentially deadly. “It's actually a greater risk for morbidity or mortality than cigarette smoking is. Being lonely is a bad thing for you,” he said.
· Read more… - Jan 21
- technical difficulties (mephisto failed to start properly)
So I can't seem to log-in to my blog currently. What I ended up doing was trying something that may have untoward side-effects. (Which reminds me, I should probably backup my database.)
· Read more… - Jan 21
- giving up on rails on dreamhost
Since I'm only averaging about 500 hits per day, shared hosting should theoretically be sufficient for my purposes. Alas, Mephisto continually dies on Dreamhost, and since I couldn't get my kludgery to work (mostly because I can't seem to install the
· Read more…mysqlgem on my local setup), I gave up completely and found a host that actually supports Rails. - Jan 21
- avatar: the last airbender
Cartoons on Nickelodeon have always sparked my imagination since I was a little kid. From Dangermouse, to Belle and Sebastian, to the Seven Cities of Gold, I found myself transported to remote times and places.
· Read more… - Jan 23
- disoriented to time and space
I've been rifling through my own blog entries and trying to index them. That's one of the things that I liked about my old hacked-together system (see exiled by fate, foobar, lunacy, and congestive soul failure) that Blosxom lacked. And while Wordpress, Simplelog, and Mephisto all support excerpts, I haven't really used them. (I suppose that'll be the next project once I get through the several hundred entries I posted through Blosxom.)
· Read more… - Jan 23
- version targeting (firestarter)
As Microsoft develops Internet Explorer 8, the idea of version targeting comes to the fore. Two articles from A List Apart, one of the premier web design web sites, ignites a firestorm, with different camps backing backward-compatibility, standards-compliance, and progressive-enhancement. Version targeting is introduced by Aaron Gustafson, and is seconded (surprisingly!) by the standards guru himself, Eric Meyers.
· Read more… - Jan 23
- mephisto, rmagick, and hostingrails
Got bit in the ass with this bug when I migrated Mephisto to another host. Looks like you have to explicitly define what imaging package you have in
· Read more…config/initializers/custom.rb.:nonewill definitely work, but so far:rmagickhasn't caused Mephisto to crap out either, although I have yet to upload an image. I don't really have any experience with:imagescience. - Jan 24
- adventure?
There was a time not too long ago that I would've jumped at the chance for adventure.
· Read more… - Jan 25
- messages in a bottle
It finally occurred to me (or I just remembered) who I'm writing this for. Me.
· Read more… - Jan 25
- small epiphanies
At this moment, I'm right where I want to be.
· Read more… - Jan 26
- an end to empire
No, I've learned everything, and I've had to learn it on my own. Growing up we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And somehow the war was somehow our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don't see our greatness, they hate us. And we deserve it. We have created an era of fear in the world. If we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness.
· Read more… - Jan 26
- limitations of taxonomy
This elliptical rant about a failed taxonomy for computer users gets me thinking. We (as in, those of us who have been exposed to Western metaphysics) have noted the failure of taxonomic structures for a long time now. While it is sometimes useful to see things in terms of hierarchical relationships, this is likely a relic of our primate ancestry, and it is clearly a kludgy shortcut in terms of understanding the universe.
· Read more… - Jan 26
- version targeting: the new bugaboo
Jeff Croft brings up [version targeting][0] again, and casts it in the old "The Right Thing™" and "Worse is Better" debate.
· Read more… - Jan 26
- happiness is meant to be ephemeral
I decided a long time ago that asking if I was happy was a pointless exercise. You either are, or you aren't, and whatever the answer is, all you can count on is that things are bound to change.
· Read more… - Jan 27
- version targeting: render unto microsoft what belongs to microsoft
I agree that Microsoft should have to deal with their own backward-compatibility quagmire without burdening web developers. The author brings up the IE-dependent components of Windows and other legacy, propietary software solutions (for example, the emergency department at one of the hospitals I work at uses an IE-dependent computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and charting system) and these are less trivial to upgrade to standards-compliance than a web site would be.
· Read more… - Jan 27
- macbook air
The MacBook Air is clearly not meant to be a primary machine. Understandably, there are many of us who do use a notebook computer as their only computer, and we are not going to be the target demographic. But there's something to be said for a computer that only weighs 3 lbs. Face it. Minimalism is beautiful. Why do you think European sports cars sell so well?
· Read more… - Jan 29
- version targeting: apple says no
Maciej Stachowiak, who is on the Apple Safari development team, has no intention of breaking the web (seen on Daring Fireball)
· Read more… - Jan 30
- 9iu11ani is out
I remember watching (and eventually becoming nauseated by) the news coverage of the WTC attacks back in 2001 and thinking how Rudy G was totally posing for a presidential run. I'm actually surprised he managed to fuck it up so badly. He managed to piss away his position as front-runner, and he even turned 9/11 into a sad, pathetic joke.
· Read more… - Jan 31
- technical merits of microkernels
After switching from Linux to Mac OS X and after playing around with Ruby a little bit, and getting a feel for the philosophies of Objective C and SmallTalk, I guess I'm coming around to Andrew Tanenbaum's thoughts about microkernels.
· Read more… - Jan 31
- breaking even
Down to my last $20, I decided to hang out at the 1¢ slots, betting a measly 18¢ a pop. Over the next hour or so, the slots whittled down my 2,000 coins to a pathetic 200 coins. This was not without its ups-and-downs, though. At first, I kept telling myself that I would quit when I got down to $15. This actually took a while since the machine would intermittently give me 50-80 coins back. But when I hit $15, I decided to keep going, telling myself that I would stop at $10. Again, it was this slow game of attrition. At $5, I moved over to another machine. The slow trickle of coins lost continued. I found myself mulling over the miserable failures and disappointments in my life.
· Read more… - Jan 31
- clawing to the surface
Wow. It's been a while since I've felt this way. As I gazed mesmerized by the spinning barrels of the slot machine, I felt suddenly suffocated by an awful feeling of despair and loneliness. It was almost as bad as being short of breath. The feeling eventually passed, but I just feel spent, and my muscles are all tight with anxiousness.
· Read more… - Jan 31
- night
The roar of traffic, the murmur and thrum of the crowd
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and the mournful winter wind, scouring the desert sand
and the inside of my soul is silent and still
like a raging river flash-frozen in mid-torrent
and eons have passed, the axis of the earth precesses, and still there is no thaw.