Cat banner…
I have added a cat banner which will appear periodically at the top of this page, along with my various tree and flower images. Here is a teeny tiny version…
Knowledge workers vs Working with your hands
I am a “knowledge worker”. I design multi-media “webcast” applications and services, and lead a small team of smart, engaged developers- I occasionally get to write some code, but most of my “real” work involves middleware and server maintenance activities to keep our applications operational. My work is largely intellectual, and this is after I spent several years altering my career path so I could work more directly with the technology.
There was a period when I was perilously close to slipping into management, and another time when I performed the role of a proposal solution architect, but fortunately I recognized that these roles were not satisfying for me. I like having a more direct connection with the technology, with actually making the solution work rather than philosophizing about how it might work. I’m willing to make sacrifices in order to keep that proximity to “reality”, and so it was intriguing to me to read an article describing why even more “physical” work might be the smart choice after all.
Shiny….
I like new gadgets. This isn’t really a general desire for new things, but rather new technology. Sometimes this desire can be beneficial: as a direct result of my interest in technology that is desnew, I am arguably more aware of the current state of the computer, game console, and smart phone markets. Other times, though, my interest becomes a bizarre kind of fixation, one which I often can not logically justify.
New layout more or less settled
The Atahualpa theme has been active here on the site now for several days. I haven’t received any positive or negative feedback, but I’m happy enough with it now that I’ve made a few minor tweaks.
- The banner pictures at the top are now my own photos: I plan on adding in a few cat pictures at some point, but the format requires some fiddling so it may take me a while
- I’ve corrected some problems that prevented my archives from showing up
- I have managed to get a twitter feed working that doesn’t require the Flash plugin
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Engineers guide to cat yodelling…
I don't particularly recommend the practice described by the following video, but it is rather funny....
The new Star Trek: a worthy successor
Irene and I went to see Star Trek today. It is her birthday (or as she says, “Birthday weekend”), so the movie was her choice. I wanted to see Star Trek, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in this “re-imagining” or “reboot” as it has been called. I left the theatre, however, feeling quite differently than I expected to.
What is an Atmos clock?
I am now the proud owner of a middling-quality Jaeger LeCoultre Atmos clock. I purchased it on eBay a few weeks ago, and it is the first thing I have actually received from my adventures there. You might reasonably ask “what the heck is an ‘Atmos’, and what’s the big deal?” In this post I’ll try to answer that question
Experimenting with a new look
No doubt you were shocked just now if you are one of my regular visitors. Yes, the site looks weird at the moment: I'm experimenting with a different WordPress theme,…
I am twittering…for now
I have had a hard time wrapping my head around the Facebook/Twitter phenomenon. Does anyone really have a thousand “friends”? Do I really care when someone, even a close friend, drinks a coffee, eats a bagel, or scratches their armpits? Not really…
And yet I have been curious. I poked around MySpace back when it was “the new thing”, and created a Facebook account (which I’ve since forgotten) when they still had only a couple million subscribers. I’ve never really touched Twitter, though- I think mostly because the short-form, incredibly “noisy” form of communication to be difficult to imagine being useful. I haven’t really changed my opinion but, as with MySpace and Facebook before, I feel I should give the latest social network “it” thing a chance. Maybe “microblogging” can live alongside my “macroblogging”?
Something for rich Pen and Paper gamers…
I remember back in the foggy vastness of the past how valuable having a decent gaming surface was when playing Dungeons and Dragons. My friend Chris and I eventually hacked…