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Wishlist

posted in life by jon on 2006-12-04

Just a link to my wishlist for those who might come looking for it. Merry Christmas!

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Learning Emacs.

posted in life by jon on 2006-03-18

After much hand-wringing and hem-hawing, I’ve decided to really, really learn emacs. There’s just something abouts emacs users (and lisp hackers too for that matter) that makes you feel like you’re missing something for not drinking their kool-aid.

I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. It was created by Richard >Stallman; enough said. It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, >and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other >words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and >the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, >focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a >professional writer–i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and >printed–emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does >the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. - Neal Stephenson

They all used Emacs, of course. Hell, Eric Benson was one of the authors of XEmacs. All of the greatest >engineers in the world use Emacs. The world-changer types. Not the great gal in the cube next to you. Not >Fred, the amazing guy down the hall. I’m talking about the greatest software developers of our profession, the >ones who changed the face of the industry. The James Goslings, the Donald Knuths, the Paul Grahams1, the >Jamie Zawinskis, the Eric Bensons. Real engineers use Emacs. You have to be way smart to use it well, and it >makes you incredibly powerful if you can master it. Go look over Paul Nordstrom’s shoulder while he works >sometime, if you don’t believe me. It’s a real eye-opener for someone who’s used Visual Blub .NET-like IDEs >their whole career. Emacs is the 100-year editor. - Steve Yegge

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My amazon wish list

posted in life by jon on 2005-11-27

Link to my Amazon wish list.http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/2K8KYBKCD1ZL8

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On Writing

posted in life by jon on 2005-08-17

I'm a big fan of author and hacker Paul Graham. Having recently read his essay on writing, I've been doing some thinking of my own about writing: specifically, how to do it and why. It seems obvious that since I bother keeping this blog I must like to write..but it isn't so.

Or at least it isn't completely so. love the idea of writing; of being able to communicate thoughts across the void and make someone else think like me. It's almost magic. I also love the idea of being a writer; the romance of it. Trading purely on ideas, separate from the physical world. The truth is though, writing is very, very hard. Hard to make the words go on the page, hard to stomach it when you read them afterword. In your head, your ideas have the luxury of remaining nebulous and half-formed, hiding away from the harsh light of day. Once committed to paper however (or screen in this case), they become real and must stand or fall on their own merit. That's a scary thing. I've read interviews with authors who said that writing was hard...but I never believed them because they made it look easy. Only later did I realize that this ability to write without effort was paradoxiacally the result of very hard work..and is precisely what allowed them to rise above their peers and get published.Partially because of the effort it requres, writing requires overcoming a big chunk of inertia to get started. Often I'll think of something I want to write only to be daunted when confronted by a blinking cursor and all that white screen.

Then why do it? Well...partially for the glory, as I alluded to before. But partially because writing is a good thing, and something I'm good at (not great perhaps..but not bad either), and I want to be better if I can. I enjoy working in IT, but writing has a purity that engineering lacks. Maybe it's because writing has fewer prerequisites: take away all the computers tommorrow and I'm dead in the water as an engineer, but you'd have to kill me to stop me from writing. They're something reassuring about that.

One of the hardest things for me is to read my own writing. I always feel like an idiot when looking back on something I wrote, inevitably comparing myself to writers I love..despairing over every mistake. Since part of becoming a good writer is writing alot, and re-reading and editing what you've written, writing is very often a humbling experiencee. Even worse, the same iniertia that applies to writing the initial draft applies doubly to edits. Even the stuff that seemed intelligent when you wrote it initially seems like unimaginable drivel when reading it later; and you have to fix it. It's hard...and often I never do it. I'm resolving to myself that this piece will be different. I'll come back at some later date, and shine and polish, cut out the un-necessities, and turn it into something worthy of someone reading. Someday.

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Links Dump

posted in life by jon on 2005-07-09

I often get asked about sites I visit regularly, and since I'm horrible at maintaining my permanent link list, I thought I'd give a brief listing of some of the sites I visit regularly (by category, but in no particlular order)

Political/General News

Tech

Gaming

Weblogs

Funny/Other

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mini-review - moneydance

posted in life by jon on 2005-06-29

I've been more involved lately in trying to get my financial house in order. I've never been very organized when using an old fashioned checkbook register, and since I already stare at a computer screen 12 hours a day, I went looking for financial software.

I knew I didn't want Quicken: Intuit is the market leader and they know it (and charge for it). Besides, I wanted something I could use on my powerbook, since most of my personal computing is done on it (not to mention how leery I am of storing anything important on a windows box), and I've heard nothing but bad about Quicken for mac.

What I found was Moneydance, a great financial package written in java of all things, meaning I can run it on windows, linux, or mac. It will import from QIF files, or talk directly to your financial institution. It will manage mutiple budgets, handles scheduled and recurring charges, it's scriptable using python, and best of all, it's half the price of Quicken for mac. I'm sure diehard Quicken fans would find something to complain about, but for me, it's perfect.

Also, though I can't vouch for him personally, I've heard that the developer is a great guy who's responsive to his users..

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20 second review: Diet Coke w/ splenda

posted in life by jon on 2005-05-16

make that 5 second review.In short: 100% improvement. I've always thought diet coke tasted somehow salty; this new mix fixes all of that, and may even approach the goodness that is diet pepsi.

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a first time for everything....

posted in life by jon on 2005-03-26

I have a confession to make: despite being part of the first generation to grow up with computers; despite writing hundreds of essays; despite working full time in IT, and spending 60 plus hours a week in front of a keyboard.... I can't touch type. Actually that's not quite true, I can do it....it's just excruciatingly slow. See, the one thing that of computer use did accomplish was to make me a truly impressive hunt-and-peck typist. I've managed to work out my own system: by using 6 fingers and cursory glances at the keyboard I can make 50 or so words per minute, .. fast enough to make crawling along at 15 wpm an excersise in frustration. I picked up the key memory quickly enough, but it isn't muscle memory,. So every time I really needed to type, I'd revert back to my own, much faster ( for me ) system. The problem is, while I'm a pretty fast typist in my own way, I wasn't going to ever get much faster; I had hit my ceiling. Also, not being able to look at the screen while typing meant that errors were more prone to go uncorrected.

Finally, I'm making the jump. This entire post is touch-typed ( except for the numbers ). I'm going to suffer through this time, even if it kills me, I'm starting a new job this week, which will make it hard to stick it out if I don't ger faster pretty quickly, but I'm certainly going to try.

Wish me luck!

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to everything a season

posted in life by jon on 2005-03-17

This is my first post as a switcher, made on my next-to-last day at my job of the last 4 years. Up-and-out as the saying goes. I'm leaving the comfy nest of small industry, and rushing headlong into the belly of the corporate beast. It's still too early to say how well I'll make the transition into Fortune 50 IT, but at least with the Powerbook, it was love at first sight:love the keyboardlove the screenlove the aluminumlove the OSlove suspend that workslove expose´love the weightlove the silencelove the apps10 out of 10, 5 stars, 2 thumbs up; whatever measure you use I love this machine in a near criminal way.

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Back again

posted in life by jon on 2005-02-14

Been awhile since my last post. It always seems as if I'm too busy..even for a quick note.

sysmin.org is up on TextPattern. I really like TextPattern's backend...but I haven't invested enough time to see if it will replace WordPress.

A quick link set of things that are interesting/taking my time

Ruby on Rails - AWESOME MVC web app framework built using Ruby It Conversations - audio files of speeches/interviews with the key figures in IT. In mp3 or aac. Free.

Macromates - makers of the best text editor ever.....now who wants to buy me a mac del.ico.us - for the 4 people out there not reading/using del.icio.us ... .more links than you can ever read..

Townhall - Why can't Ann Coulter have a new entry every day?

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43 Folders

posted in life by jon on 2004-12-06

43 FoldersAwsome site I ran across while waiting for a RAID to rebuild. Great links to OSX software and some cool links to information management ideas

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