23 December 2009

working for a living

For now this is a bit of place holder, while I try and tie all these thoughts together, but here is a great talk on the value of work.  Just plain work

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

29 November 2009

Fuzzy Data

Viewing post on one of my favorite websites, Flowing Data, I came across an interesting post. 

The first is a ranking of food recipes being searched on the day before Thanksgivings.  It contains a set of 50 maps of the US, and each shows a trinary representation of frequency (below, average, above) of search.  What is interesting is how closely it relates to my expectations of what will be served on Thanksgiving.  I guess my family in mid-America (Missouri) is just normal, and for that I am thankful.

23 August 2009

Healthy pain

Started working out a couple weeks of ago, walking every day. Yesterday, I started with trainer, and well, now I am must be getting healthier because boy do arms hurt. Walking, bike riding, and weights, are all parts of my daily life.

So for 7 continuous days making it to the gym, and 6 days without caffeine, also not part of the new me.

24 July 2009

Finally Google

Thank you Google for a few things,
(1) I now have google voice
(2) Latitude is on my iphone
(3) The moon is on Google Earth
(4) and hopefully I'll be a beta tester for Google Wave

06 July 2009

Just some tidbits

Just passing along some interesting tidbits I found this weekend, both web related.

(1) Sun is offering a free white paper on cloud computing.  It is, as expected a bit basis towards Sun w/ MySQL, but is does provide a good definition of what cloud computing can and cannot due.  Search the Sun site for "Introduction to Cloud Computing Architecture", provide some contact information, then it is free download.

(2) From the Gooogle Earth Blog,, a handy way to share a location, http://www.earthurl.org allows you to create a short URL to a place on Google Earth.  I guess it is a TinyURL for Google Earth, here is an example from D.C.

20 June 2009

DAZ 3D Studio Start

I have purchased and installed DAZ Studio, and have been struggling with content management.  Thank the maker for  cellarstudio3d.com, they have a great video series of videos on getting started.  Hopefully, I will successfully create some art for this rather plan blog.

Now I have to find some time to do this stuff.

02 June 2009

Programming thoughts found on the Web

Some thoughts for the day care of S. Lott
* "Quick And Dirty == Guaranteed Rework"
* "He Who Codes First Loses"
* "Think Once -- Code Twice"
* "Admin's Law: It's Always Permissions"
* "Programmer's Law: If it's not permissions, it's the path"
* "If it seems hard, you're doing it wrong"
* "One-Off == The First of Many"
* "Requirements Translation: Never == Rarely, Always == Mostly"
* "Things Change: Generalize and Parameterize

21 April 2009

Happy Earth Day

This weekend, between the rain drops I mowed my yard. I am not the green thumb, play in the dirt, perfect lawn kind of guy, so mowing is a chore. While mowing, one question did come up.

Why, in the week of Earth Day, am I mowing the lawn with a dirty, polluting, gasoline engine, tossing green house gasses into the air, while I am systematically removing the very part of plants that could cleans it from the air?

Sometime ago it was decided by the powers that be, marketing, that every suburban yard should look perfect, with mowing, watering, and chemicals, to create a clean green carpet. Maybe we should put our mowers away and not care about how our yard looks to someone else.

Of course, maybe this is just looking for a reason to not mow.

Now I have considered the go natural approach recommended by some, especially in the Southwest, where the desert climate means you should not be pouring tons of water into your yard, just for Kentucky blue grass. The problem is that I live in the Midwest, near major rivers, where the natural habitat would be forest (which I do love) and maybe some prairie grass. All I have to do is let nature take its course and before long I would live in a nice field of tall grass. Cool! Well except for the wildlife which would move in to stay, bugs, raccoon, opossums, etc., and then I have the problem of my dogs and kid getting bitten, worrying about West Nile and rabies.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, but what else is new. Maybe when my daughter gets older I'll switch to an old fashion push mower, with no engine, and make her cut the grass.

17 February 2009

GrandPa

My grandfather on my father's side of the family passed away before I was born. I knew he ran a service station but never new much more about it.

It appears that my brother found a photo of it in a recent home town paper.




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A bit lost

I have been overwelmed as of late, too many things do too soon, to the point that I am not getting anything done.  I have used remember the milk, but with limited success.  Now I am moving on to toodledo, lets hope it works better.

The idea of goals with subtask may make things easier.  It is a start.

02 February 2009

pleasing the eyes

I have been looking for ways to get more people at work to use Python.  Lots of Perl hacks there, so the sale has not been too easy.  The best approach may be the old marketing approach, eye candy.

Where I work is a conservative group of math and computer geeks, so while a normal eye candy would work, but would not be appreciated by management, so I have found the following works okay:
These are from matplotlib http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/
I hope to post some examples of matplotlib generated from Python in the near future.  I have some orbital paths go generated for school, and I may try that in Python/Numpy.

17 January 2009

Well writing a blog, using twitter, and setup a facebook page, and have been using linked-in for a while.  Hummm, what next on my be social networking agenda?  

breath

Started playing with Adobe Air applications, TweetDeck and Agile Agenda, and love the installation and integration.  I think Adobe may have finally a light way platform which does what Java seemed to promise.  I am not bad mouthing Java, as I have written  many and used many more Java applications, I just think Adobe has done a cool job.

It does not hurt that tweekdeck is a great twitter interface and a good reason to install Adobe Air.

15 January 2009

Distractions of homework

Well it is Spring of 2009, and my GPS Positioning class has started at Purdue.  It is the first time with this instructor, Dr. van Gelder, so I am at the panic stage trying to figure out what and how he wants his assignments turned in.  So far the homework has been okay, a brief introduction so he knows a bit about the class and small MATLAB program to do 3D rotations.

So I have this little bit of programming to do, (the intro was already email out, as it was due today), so I could sit down get things done.  Well except, I go my 3D Connexion mouse today, and well I do have play with it a bit.  You know to verify it all works and all that.

Also, well to have better integration with the MS Word world I live in, I purchased Apple's iWork09  yesterday, and while it does not support my 3D mouse, it does have lots of pretty template and gee-wiz features to play with.  I did realized shortly after buying iWork, Google Docs or Open Office could be used as well, yet I would not get all the cool templates, then again it was a bit for eye candy.

Well what other distractions are there.  Well have not been in Second Life lately, and hey that support the 3D mouse.  Maybe I should spend some time verify it?  Hmm, well I only watched my Christmas present, Blade Runner, once.  Maybe I should study its awesome lighting a bit more?

Well I did need to update my blog, and well I guess I have almost finished that...  I guess after the Christmas break it is just hard to get into the whole school thing again.  Guess I am lucky that I only one class, well and the place I have go during the day to make money.

Oh can I start complaining about source control, but I did that all day at the office, and guess I do not want to do that again.

Hmm, homework?  Maybe tomorrow.

BTW a 80's nerd note, both  @levarburton  and @brentspiner are twitting now.  If you don't know who they are, well this message is not for you.

11 January 2009

1827 days

I know its 11 days past the beginning of the year, and that is when everyone takes a moment to look back, but five years ago our child move in to our home.  We are technically legal guardians, looking after an orphan.  A girl by the age of six had lost both parents to cancer, and was moved 800 miles from her home to start a new.  In all but legal title we are her parents, and are very proud of her.

It is amazing to see someone who has seen so much so soon be able to move on, worrying about friends, playing pokemon, and throwing fits about homework.  I am amazed at how well she and children in general can adapt.  

I keep my private life private, so there is not much more to say, except kids are exceptional, and full of optimism.  I guess they were not, the human race would have died out a long time ago.

Just remember, "pokemon, you have to collect them all"


07 January 2009

Trac



Yesterday I experimented with Trac, from Edgewall.org, and was I pleased. Installation on my windows PC was painless, using Python 2.5.4 and sqlite database, especially since sqlite is included in the Python distribution.

The actual configuration of the server took some time, as I seemed to miss the whole authentification of user step. Once I had that sorted out, using a .htpasswd file, andthen some of the normal foward vs backward slash issues on Windows. It started up and I was able to get to the admin page (hint: the first login for TRAC-ADMIN is created via the command line, trac-admin executable).

Once the system was up and running, configuration of milestones, tickets, severity codes was very easy. One the eaiser web interfaces I have used.

It worked so well, I am thinking that I could you it for my own project tracking, keeping track of all my to do and project list, from house repairs to some CAP website stuff I should do. I kind of like the whole dumping my random "I should" ideas in as tickets and building projects from that. Now I just need to find a free trac setup on the web, so I can access it from anywhere. I guess I could also just get a domain and a cheap plan from Webfaction. Hmm.

Time will tell if the company uses Trac, its not an issue of technology as much as office politics, but then again when is that not the case.

06 January 2009

spirit guide?

The raven or crow.  I ponder if either would be my spirtial guide.  Thanks to the Manataka American Indian Council for the reference material.

05 January 2009

If the robot's win, we will have to listen to techno

Catch line from Maldroid, "Heck No! I'll Never Listen To Techno", a cool video done all in light-brights.
I found it on babelgum, another tv on computer site.   So far, its pretty good, watch a old PBS show of Soviet Propaganda.  Wow the Soviet's new who to twist the truth.  I often wondered why a parent would fear their child.  Well the Soviet propaganda made me worry about. See the story of Pavlik Morozov.





 

03 January 2009

technically, it counts a working towards a resolution

Well what a bloody hell of a week, welcome 2009.   With stomach flu, a bunch of people out of their routines, and sitting two dogs, who one of our dogs appears to really dislike, this has been a long week.  Now a new year has started, so I guess its time for a fresh start.

As part of my resolutions, the one to be a bit more positive, got skype and my watcom table working on the new mac, Vikings are still in the playoffs (well they have not played yet, so technically, yes),  and my parents got a good laugh at the story of the dog sitting.  They did it last week.

Well I could write more, this just this small amounts counts towards my other goal of blogging more.