Writing is going well this year. I’ve got some truck-sized plot holes to deal with, but I’m tweaking the outline as I go and plugging away at the word count. Last weekend’s NaNoThon activities helped me catch up and make some solid progress. It’s funny how the mind works. I can easily ignore the environment around me, but when I sit down to write all I can think about is how dusty the tv is, and I notice how long it’s been since I vacuumed or loaded the dishwasher. ...
The river is very calm this morning. It’s chilly (down right cold for Florida!), and the wind is still, the sky clear. It’s a beautiful morning. Work and life have been on the stressful side lately, and the calm river is a good reminder this morning to bring the calm inside. Like other moods or emotions, calm is infectious. Be the source of calm in your life. Enjoy!
Check out Maciej Cegłowski’s great talk from XOXO 2013. He is the creator behind Pinboard. it’s a fun and inspiring talk. Enjoy!
I really like the static version of the site. It’s so much easier to support and configure. I can tweak to my hearts content. Jekyll is a wonderful platform, and Octopress is a great framework on Jekyll. However, ruby isn’t my strength. I’ve fiddled with ruby in the past, but I don’t love it. It is a great language, just not for me. If I’m perfectly honest, I love perl. Perl was an early first love, and is still a terrific language, but the static site generators in perl are limited. I did take a look at Blosxom, but there isn’t a large number of active users. I did find one site with current posts built using Blosxom, so it’s still out there. ...
Catbird is an actual bird! “The catbird seat” is an idiomatic phrase used to describe an enviable position, often in terms of having the upper hand or greater advantage in all types of dealings among parties. According to Douglas Harper’s Online Etymological Dictionary, the phrase refers to the Gray Catbird and was used in the 19th century in the American South. Source ...
Very cool video showing speed tests of all iPhones side by side. Enjoy!
Yeah! I finally got the bike out this am for a quick ride. It’s been a long time. The forecast is for a nice sunny day, but it was foggy and damp this morning. Very damp…and chilly. :-) No complaints though. It was nice to have cool enough weather to wear my big leather jacket and not roast. To my pleasant surprise, the bike started right up. I don’t know why, but I figured I’d have a challenge getting it started since it’s been neglected for so long. But, no. I hit the starter and it roared to life, ready for adventure. ...
Mario Frangoulis sings a wonderful cover of the Moody Blues song, “Nights in White Satin.” This guy has an amazing voice. It’s a great song, but put it in Italian and give it to an opera singer, and wow–powerful stuff! Just goes to show, if you know what you are doing, you can sing anything and people will love it. Enjoy!
The Verge has a good article about Second Life, but the interesting part is the posts layout. The post has some nice features, like eye catching pull outs and rotating images, all floating on a retro background. Well done. When mainstream media outlets touched down in Second Life seven years ago they tended to focus on the strangeness of it all. People were having sex through a game and dressing up as foxes and kittens. The reality, says Tom Boellstorff, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, is more prosaic: “Humans already live many different kinds of life: online is just one more of those kinds of lives.” ...
I ran across this terrific resource, Common MySQL Queries. Tons of great examples…for example: Given a birthdate in @dob, here are two simple formulae for age in years: Date_format( From_Days( To_Days(Curdate()) - To_Days(@dob) ), '%Y' ) + 0 Year(Curdate()) - Year(@dob) - ( Right(Curdate(),5) < Right(@dob,5) ) and here is one for age in years to two decimal places, ignoring day of month: Round((((Year(now()) - Year(@dob)))*12 + (((Month(now()) - Month(@dob)))))/12, 2) Enjoy! ...