Black holes, LHC, Star Wars, quantum uncertainty… if it is of general geek interest, but doesn’t fit into one of the other categories, it lands here.
I am feeling “fat”, and I know exactly what I need to do to fix it. Eat less junk (not necessarily less *food*, just less junk), and be more active. But knowing what needs to be done and doing it are two entirely different things. Fortunately (?), I’ve stabilized for the moment at around 190 pounds. But I fear waking up one day and realizing I need a crane to get out of bed.
I spent an hour or so today looking at xkcd, which is a stick-person comic for geeks. Some of the humour is somewhat esoteric: math and statistics jokes, for example. But there were plenty of gems. This one is my favorite so far:
I read a blog entry today giving an opinion regarding a book on the topic of whether or not user-created content is killing our culture (Is the web killing our culture? – (37signals) ). My immediate reaction to the topic of the article was that the author of the book is probably a professional writer who resents the intrusion of all the bloody amateurs into his career plans.
It took me over two weeks, which is a long time for me, but I finished reading War and Peace (the Project Gutenberg edition) yesterday. I even wrote a one paragraph summary of my impressions of the book. I’m only a century or so late 🙂
My friend Chris and I make a regular habit of going together to airshows. I’m not terribly knowledgeable about aircraft, but I greatly enjoy the chance to walk up close and see the planes. And watching the performances put on by the incredibly skilled pilots that headline the major shows is something I look forward to.
I’ve been watching e-Ink technology, waiting for it to be mature enough to make it a practical choice for supplementing/replacing my paper technical books. Products using this technology started to become available a little over a year ago, and I wrote a bit about them at the time.
A couple of days ago I hooked up a USB headset. For fun, I also activated Windows Vista’s voice recognition system.
It works, after a fashion. Some of what I’m typing here I’m typing more or less directly using voice recognition. But I have to do a tremendous amount of correction. Let me give you an example. The following text I will type directly using voice recognition, without any corrections.
I’m a technical worker. I think that the more generic term for my kind of work is “knowledge worker”, but whatever you call it, my stock in trade is generated by my gray matter.
I am not a genius: far from it, in fact. Every complex thing I figure out takes a tremendous amount of effort on my part. I’m good at seeing correlations: logical interactions or the like. But that doesn’t mean that I just pick up a book and instantly understand something. I really wish I did.
Part of my work involves designing and writing computer software. I come from an era when it was actually possible to understand a programming language more or less completely. I develop in several language frameworks these days, but even the simplest of them seems to me to be beyond the capabilities of one person to truly understand.
I was reading one of my new favorite comics (thanks, Leaha!), and came across a mention of this:
April 19, 2007 (BELLEVUE, Wash.) – Paizo Publishing and Wizards of the Coast today announced the conclusion of Paizo’s license to produce DRAGON and DUNGEON magazines effective September 2007.
Source: NEWS: Paizo Publishing to Cease Publication of DRAGON and DUNGEON
It is odd how the death of a magazine that I haven’t read in years has caused me to pause
I found this quote on The Register from Intel’s VP and Director, Digital Enterprise Group, Steve Smith, really tickled my funny bone: