Sun, 11 Jun 2006
Web Pages
I've been looking at moving my blog to something less lame -- right now I can't blog while I'm traveling, which is why I still haven't written about my trip to the Red Hat Summit. I've also been looking at other software for creating web sites.
While exploring I ran across the Open Source CMS site. This site lets you play with many different CMS, blog, photo gallery, etc, installations, so you can try them out before committing to one.
So far my experiences with these programs haven't been very positive. I'll write more about that later.
posted at: 11:47 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 13 Apr 2005
Back from Santa Fe
We went to Santa Fe this weekend for Elyn's birthday, some needed rest, and our annual green chile infusion. Despite a low-level illness on my part this all went swimmingly. We had an awesome meal at Pasqual's.
While there we stayed, as usual, with Mark Galassi. In addition to his stimulating conversation and extensive library (this time I read Wodehouse), I find that simply being in his house inspires me to program. I think it is because he has his Linux desktop sitting there in the living room, and obviously uses it for Real Work; also he runs more gnome applets than I knew existed. In this context it is immediately obvious how useful a cool new UI hack can be.
posted at: 18:53 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 14 Dec 2004
San Francisco
I just got back from a short vacation in San Francisco, visiting an old friend of Elyn's. We did a lot of walking. I seem to mostly go on vacations that drain me more than they refresh; San Francisco is so visually stimulating and interesting architecturally that I spent most of my time silently gawking. This gets hard after a couple of days. One notable building: some bank building downtown which is basically a roman corinthian temple. Wonderful.
SF also has a weird effect on my brain. I find myself thinking crazy thoughts like, "now I must start a corporation and make ten million dollars", or "I must buy and renovate a turn of the century mansion". If I moved there I would probably never sleep again.
posted at: 13:28 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Fri, 03 Sep 2004
Anarchist Sneakers
Check out anarchist sneakers.
HitchensI read letters to a young contrarian last night. I enjoyed Hitchens' writing quite a bit. He's funny, self-deprecating, but also erudite and lets you know it. His relentless anti-religiosity is sort of a relief in these -- what? -- nothingness-forsaken times.
He does include a long defense of reductionism that I thought missed the point. Most questions don't resolve to simple moral principles where we can take an unqualified stand; people adding unnecessary complexity to a situation can (and his own principles support this) be attacked on the grounds of disingenuousness; and finally one might suspect reductionism simply because "all the wrong folks are doing it." (There's a funny, but private, story about this phrase, but I was too lazy to find another way to put it.)
He did call himself a "soixante-huixtard", a term I've always rather liked, just because I was born in 68 and feel a sort of literal affinity for it as a good year :-).
The idea that "only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity" could be said to be one of the underlying principles of free software.
Word FreakI also read Word Freak. This is an interesting look at both Scrabble and consequently obsession. I found it quite gripping, though at times (perhaps necessarily) predictable in terms of its format and topics. I'd recommend it even to non-Scrabble enthusiasts.
Reading about Maven (not the Java Maven, the Scrabble-playing program Maven) reminded me of my long-shelved plan to write a program to play Clue (Cluedo for Europeans). My problem playing Clue was always finding a nice way to represent all the information going by, I thought it would be nice to have an omniscient assistant. I looked a little but couldn't find a free software program for this.
posted at: 23:47 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 15 Aug 2004
Sad Day
A hard lesson from vet: we're merely a syringe away from the grave.
Today was sad. Elyn's cat had cancer and was put to sleep. We buried her and planted a tree.
posted at: 01:45 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 26 May 2004
Random Musings
Bastien's post set off a chain of memories for me today. I saw Soy Cuba a couple years ago at the library, and loved it. Once you get past the propaganda, and some of the goofy characterizations (the portrayal of Americans is particularly funny), you begin to realize what an interesting piece it truly is. There's a scene in a bar where the camera work is just poetic.
And of course it was co-written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I saw him once in Pasadena. He and the American translator of his work co-read The City of Yes and the City of No, the translator in English and Yevtushenko in Russian. We all assumed he was drunk, but perhaps he was just dramatic, dancing about maniacally while his translator read in English like an automaton.
That evening he also screened his film Stalin's Funeral, which was pretty wonderful, as I recall (this was more than ten years ago). There's a scene where a prisoner practices piano on the edge of table in prison; he told us that this was a true story and that the real prisoner, a concert pianist, maintained his training this way and gave a concert the week after he was let out.
I've also been thinking today about the transience of things, and the difficulty, even pain, of letting go. You'd think after all these years, and all the various projects I've worked on and left, that it would be easy. Nevertheless, despite my awareness (however vague) of this process, I find I put a part of myself into whatever I work on, and pulling it out again hurts.
posted at: 15:50 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
