iPod Update

It occurs to me, I never posted about the iPod resolution. At WWDC last August, I caved and got an iPod Video. I bought the harddrive out of Jim's dead 1st Gen to fix my old one. Then, for Christmas, we passed on the 1st Gen and the Nano to Carrie and Aly, respectively. All seems to be well, and everyone happy.

Jens Alfke considers Java

In Which I Think About Java Again, But Only For A Moment — Thought Palace - Jens says it better than I do.

The Right Wing

Once again, I find myself agreeing with Stephan.

Iraq

I wanted to chime in as seconding Stephan's comments here.

The speed of emotion.

I've long thought that there was an emotional/intellectual dichotomy that went largely overlooked.  In college, I wrote an essay (not for any class) on how the "speed of thought" is out-done by the "speed of emotion."  It's why rollercoasters are scary even when you know they are safe.  Same for scary movies.  Intellectually, you know you're fine, but the emotion gets there first and is hard to uproot.

dirtSimple.org: The Multiple Self

dirtSimple.org: The Multiple Self - Nicely said.

iPod Quandry

Well, my 1st gen iPod has finally died.  Now I am in a quandry.  Much as I would love to replace it with a video iPod, I'm not sure I can justify the expense.  On the other hand, I can spend about $130 to replace the dead hard drive in my old 5 GB with a 20 GB one.  Hm...

Same Sex Marriage

I am concerned about all of the furor surround same-sex marriages. My concern stems from what I think is a miscommunication: is marriage a secular or religious institution. I believe that as a religious institution, any given religion absolutely has the right to reject same-sex marriage. However, when it is an institution recognized and sanctioned by the government, I believe that it must apply equally to all. The fact that a particular church rejects same-sex marriage is not a reason for the government to do the same. There is a separation of church and state.

One must ask what the purpose of government recognition of marriage, and what that recognition entails. If the purpose is to promote stability of households and therefore communities, I see no reason for a restriction based on gender. If it is to provide government sanction to a religious institution, I believe it violates the separation of church and state.

What I am trying to say is this: if marriage is religious in nature, it should not be sanctioned or regulated by government and should have no direct effect on government activity such as taxation. If, on the other hand, it is a secular institution maintained and regulated by the government for the good of society, the gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, etc. of the participants should not matter.

Therefore, I think an amendment banning same sex marriage is senseless, since it either does not apply due to separation of church and state, or does not apply because it doesn't matter whether the parties involved are male or female.

Management by Fiction

Nice article. I've definitely seen this phenomenon. ;)

Sin City

Saw Sin City over the weekend and all I can say is "Wow!" It is incredibly dark and violent (think Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), but is a technical masterpiece. The acting is phenomenal, no surprise given the cast, but the film-making artistry is unmatched to date.

When you realize that many of the actors never met (at least, on set), even some who fought each other on screen, and that people who didn't know could not tell that the "sets" didn't exist, you can't help but be impressed.

On Being and Deliciousness, with Wil Shipley

On Being and Deliciousness

As usual, Wil has some tremendous insights into the development world. I am very impressed with his views on the future of development and heuristics. I also think that his analogy between development languages and syringes is spot on.

I think he slightly missed the mark when commenting on not wanting to adopt the habits of large companies however. He compares a large successful company to an old, rich, and dying man. He says that adopting a large businesses habits is like saying "I'm going to start walking with a cane and I'm going to act crotchety and I'm going to get liver disease." I think it would make a better analogy to say that copying a big companies practices is like saying "I'm going to drink, smoke and eat rich food." That is what the successful old man does, but it is not what made him successful and rich. This hits a bit close to home :)

Quicksilver

I find that Quicksilver is becoming more and more of an indespensible part of my Mac OS X installation. The more you use it, the more useful it becomes, so the trick is to make yourself use it in the first place. It seems that everyone has a different aspect of Quicksilver that addicts them to it. For me, it's the ability to quickly find a track in iTunes and make it the next item in Party Shuffle. No switching away from the app I'm in, just a few key strokes. And as this became more and more of a habit, I found that I was using the Finder less, since it was so easy to launch apps and documents from Quicksilver too. Gotta love it.

Widgeting

I'm thinking I need to put in some time on widgeting. It would be good to have a widget-ized version of Stackinator. I'd also like some memo pad thingy that supports locked entries (for passwords and such). I like Notational Velocity's model, but everything is clear and too easily displayed. WicketyWidget is good, but forces CamelCase for wiki links, and doesn't lock. I may look more into StickyBrain again. Or I may end up rolling my own. We shall see.

Poor Carrie

So, Carrie's got strep today. Bummer. I'm working from home to keep an eye on her while Tery takes her second final of the semester. I'll probably head downstairs and hang some more of the drywall to close the gap on finishing Aly's room. The fun, it never ends.

Tery's B-Day

Tery's birthday is coming up. I haven't been able to pry any "wishlist" out of her. Once again, I shall be forced to make unilateral decisions for her own good. Muwahahahaa!

Encyclopedia Mythica: mythology, folklore, and religion.

Encyclopedia Mythica: mythology, folklore, and religion. is quite the useful reference for mythology and folklore. Worth checking out if you're interested in this sort of thing.

MacGourmet Followup

Well, in fact, MacGourmet 1.1 came out complete with the promised printing support. I must say, they did a great job with it. They are using CSS to format the printing and allow for new templates to be added. I immediately took them up on this, since they had support for Avery perforated 8.5x11 sheets of 4x6 cards, but no plain 4x6 cards. I just hacked a little CSS and presto! instant recipe cards. Nice work folks.

Looking into Munin some more. I think it will be something like blogging, something like MacJournal, something like everything2, and a bit like DEVONthink/DEVONnote. Don't want much do I? I'd like to have some collaborative aspect to it. Some iApp-like sharing in a "playlist" sidebar. Gotta start sketching...

I've removed the recipes from this blog, since I have them posted in a much better format at our .Mac account. I have to say that MacGourmet is an excellent piece of recipe software. The only gap in it that I have found is with printing, which is supposed to be fixed in version 1.1. Even so, it prints fine, it's just that it doesn't cater to some of the expectations for recipes (e.g. 4x6 cards).

Wow! It's been an awfully long time since I posted here, hasn't it? What the heck have I been up to?

Let's see...

Carrie has started preschool, Aly is in second grade, Cody is in first. Tery's in her second year of law school. I'm still at Lexmark.