Priorities

This one post a month thing is stupid. Alot of things that I do are stupid. After reading the worse is better theory I've decided that the theory fits the pattern of success in many things. I also really like the focus that "worse is better" puts on simplicity. Simple things are easier to understand and easier to change. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a minimalist at heart. In my opinion, as a general rule, unless there is a "good" reason for something, it's unneccesary. HOWEVER, the beauty of "worse is better" is that defining "good" is not a primary issue. The first task in worse is better is to keep things simple. Not creating anything is pretty simple, and that doesn't really violate worse is better(though it doesn't yield anything either). There is no better quote for this concept than "It is better to destroy than to create what is unneccesary." In the spirit of this philosophy of design and creation, I'm writing a short book. It will be at least 325 pages, and I will be finished on Dec. 31. Yes, that is a completely unreasonable deadline. When I am finished, I will decide where to proceed from there. I'm pretty much following WiB. I have a very rough(10 line) outline, but I didn't write that until I had already written a few pages of the book. I basically have no rules set for myself besides have 325 pgs written by midnight Dec. 31. Look forward to a post about my experiences with this experiment short after that.

Things to remember

It's worth it.
It's meaningful.
It's valuable.
It's possible.
No Tomorrow.

Artsy stuff

I need to spend what little free time I have focusing on more artsy, less logical stuff.
The short story of my life recently is Win32Ole, File::Monitor, ActiveRecord, and Script.aculo.us

I'll herald you with an epic ballad shortly.

working days

So, my work is pretty amazing recently. I'm slowly whipping this mess of data and code into a desirable data product. As a side effect I'm producing some useful ruby methods like

class Hash
def intersection_is_equal?(other)
keys=self.keys.to_set.intersection(other.keys.to_set).to_a
self.select{|k,v|keys.include? k}.to_h== other.select{|k,v|keys.include? k}.to_h
end
end

Maybe I'll see about submitting them to ruby core.
Long story short, it's actually doing what it's supposed to do. AND I'm about to have a whole month of super overtime working on it with no one to randomly change the direction of the project.

Been writing alot of project specific code generators that are a part of my build process.
SVN is amazing, why I wasn't required to take 2 semesters on the pragprog starter kit is quite beyond me. Why I didn't have a class called "writing code generators" I'll never know.

The Storm

I love rain.
To me rain is hope.
Hope that this rain heralds a violent and raucous storm.
A positive emotional event demanding the attention of every sense.
A spectacular demonstration of power to destroy, power to control.
Zombies shelter themselves away from the storm's power to destroy them, ignoring its beauty.
There is no safety in hiding.
The Storm is beautiful.

mobilizing neurons

Ever notice an urge to snack on something while concentrating? Or play with something silly? It's a habit you learned because it HELPS. I've been reading about rewiring your brain recently, and it turns out stimulating as much of the brain as possible helps! Even if you would think it might be distracting. You can't use the same portion of your brain though, you have to do something completely different that doesn't require conscious thought. For those in the know, this might seem incredibly obvious to you, it fits right in line with the 'neurons that fire together, wire together' maxim.

So, I think I need a microfridge in my office with wasabi, ginger, jalepeno, lemon, lime, grapefruit, brown sugar, salt, basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, cinnamon, lavendar, mint, etc. Just so I can get that part of my brain moving. The downside being me trying to fit everything into an MVC architecture next time I go eat sushi.
I also need some small objects with multiple textures to fiddle with at work.
And probably 5-10 small pictures that inspire emotions in me to help activate my 'right brain' more.
Music, well, yea, that's already done.

prejudice! lulz :-p

most people aren't willing to stare into the face of madness to learn something new.
i'm happy to say i am.

the grind, and cufflinks

It's been a long two weeks. I'm still not sweating perfect software, which makes me sad. I need to learn more libraries/modules/languages/code generators, plan more, and not start coding until i know what my requirements are. That or adapt a more iterative programming style. Immediate, repetitive results, with enough agility to adapt as requirements change.

I need some shiny things. cufflinks, a shirt to hold them, and a suit and shoes to match. and a hat(but not for the cufflinks) and some rings, and 2 watches. and about 5 colognes. I need to go shopping.

More on my shopping trip later.

zombies

Seriously, why does everything stop on saturday and sunday? I can live with businesses being closed during the most natural human sleep cycle, but during the day? when the sun is bright and shining? More businesses need to realize dropping saturday and sunday from your customer support/shipping/production time means dropping 30% of your week. More people need to wake up and acknowledge their own mortality. Really. Estimate your time of death, figure out how many days you have left. Quit pissing it away. Or at least enjoy how you're pissing it away. Hate your job? Quit. Do something you love, even if it leaves you bankrupt and heartbroken. At least you didn't waste what you were given like everyone else.
screw acceptance.
self realization ftw.

Enlightenment

I hit a speed bump. It slowed me down enough to see I'm heading in the wrong direction. You know how when you learn something substantial, the world either appears less or more magical and wonderous? The optimism of my paradigm generally alternates between rising and falling, but recently, it's been rising much more than falling. I feel very human recently. The fascades the world peel away in my mind. I see things more clearly now.

screw frustration.
knowledge ftw.

screen scraping

Just read this article. I knew there was a reason I loved firebug. Time to start automating my keyboard into obsoletion.

openmoko

Just got the openmoko neo freerunner next dayed. Here's hoping I'll write something meaningful for it.

edit: i guess next day doesn't mean saturday. I would have guessed coming from Taipei they would have at least shipped it by this point, since saturday is OVER in Taiwan and I don't think they were closed for the independence day of a foreign nation. Maybe I just didn't get a ups tracking number about it yet.

edit: yep. shipping the 7th. That's great. Time to try out UPS Intercept and see if I can get it delivered to my hotel.

whining

I'm slowly moving towards the idea that personal blogs in general are for bitching and whining about whatever you can think of. So, here's me whining.

Shit doesn't go my way all the time...can someone please get to work resolving this issue?

Screw whining.
Whining ftl.

robotic financial nanny

I'm not managing my money very well, roughly 0% effectively actually. If I ever get a couple days of free time I'm going to setup a SQL server, strip my financial info from the online banking sites I use, throw it all in there and send myself a text message when I'm being bad. I'll probably use rails or maybe catalyst instead if I can't find a simpler way to pull out the info than parsing the html.

tension

Right now, I'm about as tense I'm capable of handling. I feel like a masterfully crafted suspension bridge. I think I've finally accepted and embraced the beautiful bittersweet mixture of maintaining gentle constant pressure on essentially every aspect of my life and train of thought. Encouraged by the persistently applied adverbs of Daft Punk's 'harder,better,faster,stronger'(i assume 'smarter' is implied) that has become my mantra recently and the sarcastic reality check of Blackalicious' 'nowhere fast' I avow that nothing less than the most rapidly developed, simplest, useful, scalable, portable, and universally distributable is acceptable. I am simultaneously caught up in the most hopeless romanticism, aggressively pursuing the things which I find most emotionally invigorating. Aggressively because I refuse to regret anything that I am capable of changing or continue to do anything with which I am unhappy.
screw relaxing.
productivity ftw.

milestone

i just watched a site go down in realtime ~5min from when i linked to it from slashdot. that's enough of a reason to start a blog i guess.