The Twilight Report

MS Notepad (not updated since windows 2k) has better unicode support than emacs v21.

2008-07-24T20:28:00

Today when I left the house I noticed it was raining. Then when I was in the train trying to dry off, I noticed it wasn’t raining. Then when I got to St. Leonards and was walking the last leg to work I noticed that it was raining again. I was feeling a bit like Truman when the rain cloud was following him.

I have sort of decided that I want to get an iPhone which makes me feel like a sell out because I think they are stupid. On the other hand I view it as a free iPod touch which would let me watch videos on the train, which currently I can’t do because although over powered, my notebook fails at video when it isn’t plugged into a wall why is that? I’ve noticed that since I started commuting from the Central Coast a lot of my thinking revolves around getting a train which will likely allow me to sit down, and what I am going to do when I get that seat.

Last Friday I went to see Assassins. We were prompted to go see it on account of everyone in my family is a fan of Sarah Vowell and she had a highly amusing anecdote about the musical in the introduction to her highly amusing and well researched Assassination Vacation. I sort of had a celebrity crush on her sometime back. The lighting was really badly done, and the sound was a little buzzy at parts, but several of the actors were actually pretty good. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth were good, but my favourite was the innately jovial Guiteau.

There is something about flawed somewhat incompetent villains that I find endearing. My favourite cartoon character has always been Starscream, the constantly scheming traitorous lieutenant to Megatron. In watching the new BBC Robin Hood series I immediately took a liking to the Sheriff because of the joy in which he employs his sarcastic wit and sadistic pleasures. Lately, however I am liking Gisborne more and more. His melancholy manner and the way he feels so uncomfortable in almost any situation (but especially when he is trying to Marion) is wonderful to watch. It is somewhat troubling that Guiteau is not a cartoon or legendary villain. He’s a murderer.

I started reading the highly entertaining Linux Hater's Blog. It was indirectly linked to from a /. story, and even though I love Linux as a development platform and for developing web sites, it sucks shit on the desktop, and this guy understands exactly why and explains in a concise but nuanced way, along with a whole lot of entertaining^[1] vitriol. The thing is Linux is never going to be a serious player on the Desktop, so it is all fairly academic. I can’t really stand any of the modern user interfaces for an extended period of time. My Mac seems like a relief after a long day using Winblows at work, and sometimes GNOME and KDE are even offer a welcome respite from either or both. So I am picky, that is probably my fault. What is distressing is that user interfaces are getting progressively worse. I spent a day or so using Vista in order to make sure an application at work I was finishing off worked there, and it was a really horrible experience. If I didn’t know better I’d say that they Microsoft was trying to convince me that XP wasn’t so bad after all.

if you are entertained by geeky computer stuff

3, 2, 1...

2004-12-02T17:59:00

Three

My lunch is culturally schizophrenic today. I ordered the Goulash Soup and the Texas Beef Brisket.

Two

Some of you already know that I run a web site for a retired marketing guy (henceforth "Chuck"). This is on the side, my day job is still working at The Company. The web site is www.idea-bank.com. Originally I did everything involved with the web site, except for write the actual content, of course. Some time back Chuck wanted to revamp the look of the site, and I recommend that he get someone else do the HTML. So now someone else is responsible for the HTML and I do the back end database and administrative tools.

This actually seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, because my philosophy toward HTML is somewhat old fashion. I don't believe in spinning or flaming logos, and I don't think every web page needs a fancy JavaScript driven GUI. I actually think those things tend to distract from the content, which is (contrary to popular opinion) why you actually go to a web site.

Chuck wants to improve the web site with some new features. As it turns out the back end (my part) is actually flexible enough that the changes required are minimal. A few weeks ago I asked our HTML guy to make some really minor changes, amounting to copying some files to a different location. I could actually do this myself... it is my server... but I want to stay out of the HTML code, and besides it would be rude. He still hasn't made these changes. I guess this is the downside to this arrangement.

Since the server is mine, I like to keep everything neat and tidy, and this guy is a Windows user, so he does little things to annoy me like using the short .htm extension instead of .html. We aren't running any sorry ass sixteen bit operating systems here; filename extensions do not have to be three characters, damn it!

One

Think I finally got Parallel Abstraction working. I'm stress testing it with test cases right now. This is big. This is proof that the Universe does not hate me.

Arizona Fish Story : A Life Less Serious

2004-10-26T12:18:00

phone woke me up. reporter daily star. "it's three o'clock morning" i moaned. parts of speach difficult. photographer. desire photographs taken. for interview. vaguely remember reporter from yesterday. mitch gitman. acknowledge affirmative. roll out of bed. stagger bathroom, drench self healing power of hot water. My eyes begin to see objects a little more distinctly and my memory is coming back on line. Yesterday a reporter had interviewed me about the Dorm network "ResComp" or as I like to refer to it "ResInComp." I turn the water off and start to towel off. I had directed him in the direction of an acquaintance Fydor and my friend Tyler, because they were like minded Internet Dorm Dwellers. Mitch had just called me up to ask if they could photograph me using the Internet.

I wonder why he called me up this early as I walk back into my room, when I notice that it is awfully bright in my room for 3:00am. I squint at my alarm clock and hit it with a clenched fist. It changes to 8:14am, which I assume means it is actually 8:04am, since I always set the thing ten minutes fast.

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