Everything OK

Asides

Thanks to everyone that wrote in. I am okay, I just haven’t had anything to post in a day or so. I guess when people get used to a deluge of content every day if that stops people get worried. Sarah got back from her two week tour of China a few days ago so I’ve been seeing her a lot.

Humble Googling

Asides

It’s always humbling when you’re searching for an answer to something on Google and you come across a page from your own site in Google. It’s even worse when that page has the answer. I want Technorati or Feedster to show three types of hits: those from my own blog, those from other blogs, and those from Google.

Email Stats

Asides

It looks like the email stats thing was adding over half a second to my front page load time. So it’s temporarily on hiatus while I tweak my queries so it won’t be so slow. Have about seven thousand ham and twelve thousand spam in the database, so that may have been slowing it down.

Gnome 2.8

Asides

Some screenshots of Gnome 2.8. Looks nice. Like any true geek, I’m more interested in the nice shadows on everything than the actual improvements. Are the shadows stock? 😉 I keep going back and forth on my Linux desktop. I’ll use Gnome for a while because it seems cleaner and then I’ll switch to KDE because I seem to get more done and I like things like being able to press Win + M to minimize all the windows. Hat tip: Wes.

A Walk

Personal

I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately so earlier tonight I went to the park to clear my thoughts the best way I know how, thinking through everything. It’s one of my favorite places in Houston but I haven’t been in a while because the weather has been pretty warm and I’ve been pretty busy. It’s night and a the wind rustles pleasantly as I stroll to my favorite thinking spot. Someone is there and unsure of what to do I keep walking with no real destination in mind. I come to a spot that just a short while ago was a dry bed of concrete and a mess of construction, but it has become a long reflecting pool with comfortable benches and a relaxing fountain at the end. This new part of the park is a tribute to the Washington Monument. It’s perfect. When life pushes you beyond where you’re comfortable that’s often where you’ll find the most rewarding experience.

Great Hackers

Asides

I just finished reading Great Hackers by Paul Graham. I think he hits some key points pretty well. Personally I’m very sensitive to enviroment when getting work done. As with any Graham essay, it’s as interesting to see what he took at as what he left in. View source on the page and read the HTML comments. His old essays used to have some real gems in the comments but most seem to have been scrubbed. Wish I had archives.

Zoto

Uncategorized

Zoto looks pretty neat. I signed up earlier and also set up an account for my Mom. But why isn’t WordPress a “supported blog”? Only a 136 users so far as I write this. Go sign up and try it out. They’ve done some interesting things with the interface and they have an open source photo client available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. I couldn’t get the Linux client working on my Mom’s computer, had no trouble at home on Gentoo though. I think it was an old version of Python.

I uploaded a few not-yet-on-the-photolog photos to my Zoto page to get the party started. (The fact that some of those are from Christmas and New Year’s means I really need to catch up.)