I've added a People Ryan Knows section. It has little bits of info and pictures of some of the people I know. If I know you and you're not on it and would like to be, then send me a note telling me to add you. It probably just means I've not gotten to you yet. Or I hate you :) If there is anything in particular you want me to add to your page (or someone elses) then let me know.
One of my favorite songs by Natalie Merchant is Frozen Charlotte. While listening to it recently, I became curious to find out what the title meant. It seems that some poor girl froze to death in the 1840s while riding to a ball. This inspired a poem which inspired a story and a dessert. And eventually the song. Strange world.
"There are not many people who really want to change the world." - Ryan's thought of the day.
I've added a Utilities section for things I find useful, mainly crypto related things. SSH/Putty/PGP and the like. So if you're ever at a machine without them, you know where to come to grab them.
I said Now Dammit!
Led Zepplin is god, or good, or both. Go listen to led Zepplin now. Now dammit!
And when you get done with that look at this and think to yourself how terrible it is that Alpha Chips are no longer being developed. This graphic was from a study done a few years ago, and as I recall it was well done. I just wish I could find it now...
In addition to my network diagram there are now digrams of the 1st and 2nd floors of my house. I'll fix these up and add the basement and 3rd floor when I get them measured. Just in case you wondered how it was all layed out.
Well the server acquired another 12GB of movies today. Some of the addtions are:
That leaves 4.6GB free on the server's 230GB partition. What fun!
There was a recent news bit about a new mouse that came out. Interesting shape. I wonder where they got the idea? Could it be a trend? I hope so... :)
Whitespace: I know a great many programmers who'd have someone crucified if they asked for whitespace to mean something in a programming language. They want the complete freedom to format their code in whatever manner suits them. This is all fine and good except is makes it a son-of-a-bitch to read. At a quick glance C is a lot harder to understand than FORTRAN. In C you must carefully count your braces, brackets, semicolons, etc. And a single character left out or misplaced can be hard to find without a bit of searching. In FORTRAN you can quickly look at a page of code and because the formatting and carriage returns in that code mean something, you can usually spot an error such as an open for statement. The same error might take several minutes to find in C is you have a few nested ifs or fors in it. Python is another language that is easier to read and debug because of its required code formatting. The idea is that you're probably going to put in a tab and/or carriage return anyway (if you want it to be readable) and so you might as well have it mean something to the language. Do away with those nasty semicolons and such. The shape of the code is a good indicator, as is color. Most good IDEs (EMACS is an IDE as far as I'm concerned, and pratically an OS as well...) color the code and highlight various bits of syntax in the code to speed up the development. And most will also do quite a bit of formatting tricks for you as well. I can see how having to worry about formatting can be a pain for a quick-n-dirty hack, but as most quick-n-dirty hacks end up turning into larger programs anyway, I think it is worth it for the readability and maintainability.
Freedom, Privacy, Democracy: Frink!
Some interesting stories recently collected from Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and elsewhere regarding the Freedom, Privacy, and Democracy in the US.
If you haven't already read them, do.
"Buzzwords are dangerous, and little brains are attracted to them. Like moths to a flame." -Ryan's thought of the day.
If you found out that god did not exist, or perhaps that he did but just didn't care about you, how would your life change? I asked this question of Sir Boyle (a friend of mine) a few days ago. Sir Boyle is one of my few friends who believes in god and the christian tradition. His response was something along the lines of I don't think I would change, and that is my problem. What Sir Boyle meant was that he wishes his behavior at present was different, but that if there was no god he would act as he does now. Implying that, ideally, he would act differently depending on whether or not there was a god. I imagine a lot of people feel that way, and this bothers me. It really makes me wonder if the main reason a great many people follow a religion is simply out of fear. I've always seen that as a good possibility, but I hoped, in the back of my mind, that perhaps it wasn't true.
Things I have to do this weekend:
Frink. Work is annoying...
Go read Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. It's entertaining and often quite funny.
I find it very disturbing how tightly capitalism and democracy are linked in most people's minds. Especially those who consider the US to be a truly democratic and capitalist country.
The parents of every girl I've dated in the last 7 years have been divorced. Kelly, Erin, Annie, Emily, and Cassie - all of their parents were divorced. In this house, both Steve's and Melissa's parents are divorced. Kim's may be as well but I am not sure. In Rochester, most (all?) of my friend's parents are also divorced. Yet most (all?) of my friend's parents in Louisville are still together. Odd.
It snowed today. Soft, white, quiet, and serene. It is very pretty here when it snows. It muffles all the sounds from outside and makes it deathly quiet in my room. I like that.
Spending 30 minutes locating and digging you car out of the snow is not fun. So I reward myself with chocolate covered cherries.
RIT is a lot of work, I'm not getting paid to do it, as a matter of fact I'm paying them so that they give it to me to do. I think I could learn just as much doing it on my own, and not paying them. But that damn degree...
