January 2008
23 posts
That's Columbia COLLEGE, not University.
I ran into Matt Schick on campus the other day as I was walking to the train. Apparently he goes to Columbia too. I know Matt from high school; he went to Northside with me, and we were on Swim Team together. So we make a little small talk and it turns out he not only goes to Columbia, but he took the five-year scenic route as well (actually, all Columbia students might do that). He’s...
Introduction to !@#$%
I started off Spring 2008 with Introduction to Economics. I wasn’t expecting it to be very good, as one of the assigned books was about Jerry Butler, a famous Jazz musician and completely unrelated to economics in any possible way, but I was completely wrong. My professor is a 70 year-old black dude that swears like a truck driver and he’s funny as shit. There’s really not...
Take the Red Book
About 98% of what I read is science fiction (or fantasy). The other 2% are books about programming or design, or non-fiction. Which makes it a little awkward when some people recommend books to me. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been told to read Kite Runner, or something by Zadie Smith, or something else in that same vein. Previously, years ago, I would have read them, but...
Whatever happened to the sit-up?
I remember doing them when I was little, but at a certain point I came to think of the sit-up as being obsolete. It was replace by the crunch, which was apparently better for your back and neck, and also worked your abdominals harder. This was further confirmed when I discovered I had a degenerative L5S1 disc and went to physical therapy, where they instructed me to always do crunches on a swiss...
Where's my jetpack?
I have a horrible habit of thinking of older movies as somehow being not as good as current movies. Only a small part of that is about plot; for instance, what seemed scary then doesn’t hold much weight now (Soylent Green is people!). That’s not to say I don’t love Soylent Green and think it’s an incredible movie, but come on, the end was a little underwhelming. The rest...
The Nines
I really, truly, don’t know what to say abou this movie. I mean, I thought it was great. Not mind-blowing, but great. It’s good enough that it merits going in my “next in line to buy” wishlist but not that I’d recommend anyone watch it. In fact, don’t, because you probably won’t like it. I can’t imagine most people liking this movie. I mean,...
Fuckr
Part of the awesomeness that is Tumblr is its support for feeds. You can give it any feed and it will insert it into your blog as it’s updated. You can even specify how it should treat a feed. As a quote, text, photo, etc. So I was really excited to have it automatically insert photos from my Flickr feed. So I did it, and as you can see it gave less than spectacular results. I spent an...
“You’re gonna carry that weight.”
Woe Is Me
Me: Goddammit I just ate and now I'm hungry again.
Danielle: Damn metabolism.
Danielle: Always screwing you.
Me: Yes, yes it is. This should count as a disease. I should be able to get insurance to pay for my food.
Unwarranted Skepticisim
I get recommendations all the time. Everyone does. Your friends tell you to see this movie, or read this book, or gawk at some cult classic that you’ve somehow missed all the time. But there is no one with universally good taste. Everyone likes something that someone else dislikes. After a while you get to know what you like that your friends also like, and when you get recommendations...
“See you, space cowboy.”
“Look at all the things we’re not doing.”
– David Heinemeier Hansson
Oh. World clock.
I just spent the last hour (intermittently) trying to find a widget to display the current time in France. I was positive that there was one pre-installed, but a cursory glance at the widget gallery revealed nothing. So I went hunting with various combinations of the keywords “time”, “clock” and “international”, until some passing thought put the phrase...
“Isn’t it funny? That which we are most afraid of, is what thrills us the...”
– What tHe ßLeeP Do ωΣ (k)πow!?
'Tis A Wee, Wee Hour
It’s 3:43 AM right now and I just put the finishing touches on a clever little bit of Javascript. I spent two days at work on it, unable to figure it out, and have been thinking about it off and on all through the holidays. It was only at 3:00 in the morning, while staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, that my mind puzzled through the logic gates and I was able to finish the script. ...