Strange Loops

Optimus Prime Dies of Prostate Cancer

Link: National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC).

Darn! I guess I should take better care of myself... If a rock like Prime can bite the dust, we are all vunerable.

1st thoughts about the iPod Shuffle

I finally broke down and bought the 1GB iPod Shuffle on Saturday. I went down to the apple store and picked it up. The store was just packed with people browsing and trying out the various apple products. The demand for the shuffle just seems amazing to me. Most of the people in line were waiting to pay for their shuffle. BTW both days I was at the Victrola last week, the number of apple notebook users dwarfed the pc notebook users 5 to 1. It's almost like in my little corner of the world, the greater than 90% marketshare of PCs doesn't seem to exist.

But onto talking about the iPod Shuffle.

Do you have 43 things to do?

If you haven't already, check out 43 Things. The guys over at the Robot Co-op have a pretty cool idea. At a very simple level, treat it like a web based todo list (with the ability to blog upon todo items and get comments!). At a more complex level, the ability to write blog entries associated with "things" you want to do seems especially motivating to get stuff done. You can accomplish something similar same with blog categories but a goal oriented interface just makes it easier to do.

My 43 things is located here.

Trying to be hip

I always said that Capital Hill was too hip for me. Sitting at the Victrola coffee house blogging on my powerbook. The very act of being hip has made me unhip. Or at least the act of trying to be hip has made me unhip. :(

Well at least the scenery can't be beat...

Roll Theme Music....

"In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. They promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no-one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team."

Apparently looking for the A-Team is as easy as posting a link on craigslist. It must be tough for a bunch of geriatrics to find work as soldiers of fortune.

Of course the obligatory amazon link to the team in their younger years.

Cue End Credits

Oh yeah!

I didn’t think the superpower thing would be very useful but man oh man it’s an absolute power trip. I was late for work yesterday and I was thinking to myself, “I’ll just use my super speed”. It only took me two minutes to brush my teeth, eat breakfast and get to my workplace. On the down side there is this massive hole in my door. Gotta remember that I’m near invulerable and have to remember to open doors and shit. Of course, I see a cute girl and I also have to resist the urge to use my x-ray vision to check her out. Darn my morality! What’s a Kansas farm boy gotta to do to get some action in this town?. Do you know how hard it is for a superhero to get a date these days? Now my buddy Bruce, absolutely none of these problems though he has problems sleeping at night.

See more progress on: become a super hero

Cute Krazy Kat!

It's 3:30am. I'm being kept awake by a cat that has decided to sit outside my apartment and meow. It's a cat that is owned by somebody in my apartment building. I think it may have been locked out by mistake. Anyway part of me wants to let it in but I'm in no way prepared to take care of a cat. Even if it is for a night.

The crazy thing was that it sprinted past me just as I closed the door to the second floor. That gave me the shock of my life. Didn't think anything could move that fast.

Darn! Now it's scratching on my door....

A friend of a friend Bruno, an italian mafia enforcer/hitman, would say "Pazzo! Pazzo!".

Changed this goal slightly

Initially this goal was “build beautiful software”. I gave that some thought and realized that building beautiful software wasn’t the challenge. I’ve seen lots of software that has been elegant in concept, brilliant in design or beautifully well written. The problem was that they didn’t anything useful. It’s all to easy to fall into the trap of building things for beauty’s sake (I’ve have been guilty of this in the past).

See more progress on: build beautiful useful software

Java: Language Vs Environment

I looked at Java in late 1995 – 1996. I had this terrible book that promised to teach java in a half hour. I had this other terrible book that was Java for C Programmers. In short, I didn’t have a very good intro to the language. I think the first decent book I used was O’Reilly Java in a Nutshell. The Java language has never appealed to me. I like that it was garbage collected but the language was too overly verbose for my liking. With CPlusPlus I was more succinct and the RAII idiom appeared more useful to me than GC. I’m starting to have second thoughts. I think the language is still bloody awful though it is getting better. Java 1.5 and the support for Generics are a step in the right direction. The impressive part about Java is the community that has formed around it. Trying to install a 3rd-party CPlusPlus library can often be a nightmare. The same thing cannot be said for 3rd-part Java libraries. I think this has helped the Java community to flourish. The Java community has also built tools around the Java language flaws. Eclipse and AspectJ are just two of the many great tools I’ve heard about. I want to spend more time exploring the Java environment. I think the Java environment rocks compared to the Java language which kinda sucks. My goal is to spend time looking at the various Java scripting languages e.g. Jython, JRuby, Groovy, Nice, Kawa, SISC. I’m also going to look at developments tools e.g. Eclipse, AspectJ, Hyades, JUnit, Ant. I see great potential in the various artifacts that have appeared in the Java environment.

See more progress on: improve my java-fu

Jack playing Jack

The funniest thing I've seen today.