Groove
I have come upon a curious groove. In my project, I have been liable to highs and lows, thinking at one progression that it is so simple that I will be able to code the whole thing in a matter of hours, and turning around to thinking that the whole problem is so complicated that no one, given a countless number of days, could solve it. But just recently, as I told you before, now as I’ve started for real here in March of 2009, I have come to think of it as a doable thing, this construct of mine, that will yield given a modicum of steady effort. I expect that it will not be done in a day, but that it will get done by and by. I don’t know what to call it, expect perhaps to be cautiously optimistic. Which, actually, is rather a pleasant thing to be. 12:01am comments?
I Don't Even Work Here
The state of my clutter. PowerMac monitor, coin stuff, pennies, books, etc.
Click on pic for larger version. 12:01am comments?
March 27, 2009
metal
taste the iron in the blood
it is human
a part of us is metal
in our depths, even
sometimes to surface in the eye as a look
and lo, how vacuum the stare
how we can form words void of feeling
forged cold and calculated within
the expression of the machine
in its fleshly disguise 12:01am comments?
Sours
Saturday the 14th was the onset of a traumatic event: innocently updating my OS, the computer reboots and then won’t start up again. Sometimes it does that, but I try about 7 or 8 times, and keep getting an I/O Error. Crap. The hard drive must be toast. Luckily I have everything backed up, since the advent of Time Machine in OS X, every couple hours does an incremental copy of everything I touch. So I try and make an appointment to the Apple Store, and the earliest they have available is Tuesday 2:20am. Crap. So what did I do? From Saturday the rest of the day through all of Monday, I try to recover everything in advance of the appointment. Scanned the disk with TechTool Pro, wiped then reinstalled OS X Leopard, but every time I tried and copy files from the backup drive, about 2 hours in, it cut out. Crap.
I understood on some level that the drive I used for backups must have gotten some bad blocks there, too, but I didn’t want to admit it on other levels, I think. So, anyway, I took the MacBook Pro and the backup drive to the Apple Store, and explained what I’d been going through. And this is why people love Apple: instead of the 5 day wait to get it back, the guy there says it’ll only take 2, then when I make a call in front of him to Micky that she should ship a laptop out to me from California, he checks and finds a free technician, and he said it would be ready in an hour. And since normal drive capacity has gone up so much and he can’t upgrade me, he waives the labor fee, all I have to pay is about $170 for the new drive. Which was less than I’d expected to pay. So I go home and finally do recover everything, deleting the files that had been corrupted, nothing real important. But that’s not the end of it.
I try and copy the virtual machine image from Parallels (my Windows XP disk) to my new laptop hard drive, and it keeps cutting out at 22 gigs out of 27. Crap. So I try a bunch of things from about Tuesday until Thursday, when I discover the command “dd”, which can keep copying even on error, and fill in zeros where need be. So FINALLY, I got everything working again. I swear, this was more traumatic than getting my gall bladder removed. I’m mostly recovered, now, but man, what a trip.... And in other news, I’ve got a lot of things to do. My AI I think is about due. My brother wants to make an iPhone game. This other guy wants me to make something with the iPhone and taxis. And another friend wants advice about something else technical, though that’s hush hush. And I got paid again, so there’s that. Oh, and Eun Hye’s birthday is soon, got an idea of a message to send her. And so it goes, so it goes.
In which life is sweet even when it’s sour, like that candy. 12:01am comments?
What a Computer Is For MUC writes love letters, a simulator of a computer from 1952. 12:01am comments?
March 21, 2009
Quote
God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of His very words; and that not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in His children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption of the truth, but because He would not have them oppressed by words, seeing that words, being human, and therefore but partially capable, could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant, and that even He must depend for being understood upon the spirit of His disciple. Seeing that it could not give life, the letter should not be throned with power to kill.
Adventure
I am discovering that every time I had thought I had figured everything out, I was right. I only needed to fill in the details, which happened to take much longer. But oh, what discovering the details has meant! The beauty that was to be seen in the patterns! In short, the time line so far:
i began in march of 2009
i ended in august of 2007
2008 i spent working out details
Yes, now I feel as if I have truly begun. August 2007 I had it all figured out, the first time I felt so. 2008 I did a lot of work and had so very little to show for it, it appeared. But it was necessary. Let’s see where this all goes? Perhaps adventure is not just bad planning, after all. 12:01am 2 comments
For Gift Purposes
I feel naked unless I have one of these ready to give to someone of my choosing. It is a silver denarius of Marcus Aurelius, who gained so much fame after the Gladiator movie. Just won off eBay. 12:01am comments?
March 13, 2009
Quote
There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better; nobler; holier than it knows now.
It Is Written
It is Lent, the time for fasting and repentance. I am trying my best to keep my distance from fried food, especially, specifically, fried chicken. You know, KFC and Roy Rogers stuff. That’s the sacrifice this year, and I should keep away from high fat food anyway. I’m reading the Bible translated into modern English, entitled The Message, and I am more than a third of the way through this fourth time through that good book. And I now have 5 items in my Code of Honor, looking for 2 more to make an even 7. Heh. 6 Precepts, looking for the 7th there, too. You know what the man said, “Be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.”
In other news, it may be that I have all the big problems solved in my AI. I am working right now on an implementation plan, what is also known as a detailed design. I was trying to jump right into Lisp coding last weekend when I realized that this would be a better course to do. Since about last Tuesday I’ve been kind of high on the idea of it all, so that’s something. There is currently no rush to do it all up, since I have at least another month of the day job to finish before they’ll let me go. And I don’t think I’d want to leave early, even if I could. Not that kind of person, I would hope. But who knows what tomorrow will bring to all of it? Not I, not I.
In still other news, Foresight has not been a money-maker. But I will let it keep running on the server I’ve purchased for a year. And I might want to use it for other reasons, that server, a Joyent Accelerator. It runs Java and Lisp native on the machine, I have discovered, so I think I could set up my AI on it to connect to from anywhere, and that might be interesting. But as far as writing another Facebook app, I’m getting a little tired of the whole scene. I think I might try my hand at iPhone development next, if I’m in the mood to play around in anything. Right now, I’m back to doing my AI, above, so maybe in a little while. And that’s that for now. Que sera sera.
In which I have decided to thank God every night for every day. 12:01am comments?
You Answer Only with Spring
Pic I had lying around. I think good things are to come.
Click on pic for larger version. 12:01am comments?
March 4, 2009
Quote
According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it... Be importunate, Jesus says — not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door.
I Gotz Paid, Suckaz
I’m making a final push in advertising my Facebook application, Foresight, and then I’m moving on. Getting a little tired of Facebook, actually, so my next new thing might be creating an iPhone application or two. I have the perfect environment for doing so, after all. It’ll have to be in my spare time, like the Facebook thing, since there’s no pay unless the thing(s) become a hit, which if you haven’t guessed by now, is a long shot. And there’s that. In other news, I’ve done a little here and there to further my ol’ AI. Wonder if that’ll ever get done. But anyway, got my first paycheck from my day job, hence the title of this update. Oh, yeah. 12:01am comments?
