Archive for July, 2003

arrrr

Just saw Pirates of the Caribbean. I do declare, what a fun movie. There were no annoying plot holes or inconsistences. The dialogue was clever; the plot, interesting. Kudos to the director for pulling off a great mix of fright and humor. Just when it gets scary’ish, they pull off a joke. That’s difficult to do. One has to know how to build up suspence, and then release a joke at the right moment.Johnny Depp is phenomenal as Captain Jack Sparrow. He pulled off a very original and entertaining pirate. In all, I would dare claiming Pirates the best “summer movie” of the summer. Though, I did not watch any of the other “summer blockblusters”, which seemed like complete trash.

   {opine, rompin' years}    #

techie

I really like this ny times article about techies by necessity. More and more, I’m starting to look at my computer science education as something more practical than something I actually I am going to make a career out of. dunno dunno. The once far Future is much too close.

Anyway, the article should have mentioned what makes it possible for these people to become techies: the Web. The plethora of HOWTOs, tutorials and documentation on the web makes learning new trades much more accessible.

   {nerd, rompin' years}    #

swam

To stave off further chubbiness, I have begun swimming reguarly. Why swimming? Running is too mundane and ordinary. How often does one get a chance to swim around? (The answer for me is “three times a week”, it seems.)

Today’s swim was terrible, as I had let my mind wander. In the midst of one lap, I began imagining being completely stranded in the ocean, alone, clinging to a piece of drift wood. A mean, little wave comes and destroys my would-be floatation device. And there I am, bobbing in the vast ocean, treading water to stay afloat and alive. I swim. I swim a little more. Imagine that terrifying moment when you realize that you are so close to death, that all you have to do is stop moving.

To say the least, it was not a happy time in the pool. I realized I spend so much of my life in a passive mode. That is, I can chose to do nothing, and no immediate and terrible harm will come. I can float along, gently picking and choosing how to exert myself, if at all. I guess I’m spoiled lucky. It’s hard to imagine a life of treading water.

   {rompin' years}    #

don’t even bring up flying cars

Miracles of the Next Fifty Years [via mr. dashes], a reprint of a 1950 article about what life will be like in 2000 A.D, is interesting. And it got me thinking….I noticed that most of the predictions about science and medicine were on the mark. (Cancer is not yet curable in 2000. But physicians optimistically predict that the time is not far off when it will be cured). And I noticed that most of the wacky what-were-they-thinking stuff was in the predictions of how the daily lives of people would be changed.

I realize now that most Future predictions are couched purely in technological limits. That is, they often only think, “What will be possible? What technological barriers will we have breached?” But, I realize, the Possible is not the only consideration in determining what technology affects the daily lives of people. Money and business is just as important.

Not every brilliant technology idea makes it to the marketplace and into people’s lives. If you can’t sell it and popularize it, you won’t affect anyone. We all are using Intel-driven computers because of marketing and interoperability, not because it is the most advanced system possible. Japanese teenagers have decided that the world needs cameras in their cell phones.

I guess business people and marketers are just as vital in the creation process as engineers and artists.

   {nerd, opine, rompin' years}    #

long absense

Okay, this long absense is not 100-hundred percent my fault. Blogger recently upgraded their system to this new version called Dano, and I had some trouble adjusting to the new system. For a while I could not publish anything at all for a reason I do not understand at all. (It seems I can’t use Mozilla,I have to go back to IE; UGH). Even now, I have my blogger stuck in “LoFi” mode and I can’t figure out how the hell switch it back to normal mode.

I had a bit of a troubleshooting-hell, and I was frustrated to find very little help online. It may seem a bit unfair to complain and make demands for something that I get for free. But, I’m not asking for much. I just want the damn thing to work the way it’s supposed to. And when it doesn’t, it would be nice to have some documents that I can pour over and figure out what’s wrong.

Look, I barely made a peep when not a single feature was added over the two years I have used Blogger. I took the outages and buggy tendencies in stride. But Blogger’s running out of excuses. It cannot continue its “we’re a small struggling shoppe” song-and-dance now that they hit the jackpot and got bought by Google.

I think my frustration is overflowing; especially since I’m beginning to feel even more capable of making my own damn content management system / database as my web programming chops improve. I realized that I think I might have out-grown blogger and it may be time to move on.

   {meta, nerd, rompin' years}    #

control-c will set you free

Eric Siegel used to teach computer science at Columbia University. He is no longer at Columbia because, according to a co-worker who had him, “Columbia has this thing where they fire people that actually like to teach.” Anyway, he was not offered tenure several years ago, so I guess he went into the private industry.

Anyway, Eric used to take out his little keyboard during class and sing songs about computer science to his students. Some of them were eventually recorded. I highly recommend that you download (mp3) and listen to them (especially “Debugging Angst” and “Modular Decomposition”).

   {Columbia, nerd, rompin' years}    #