| The Beginning of The End |
[Oct. 5th, 2011|11:07 pm] |
Let me first say that I am not a Mac fanboy. I am using a Mac to type this, a laptop I bought in the summer of 2006, and when it dies I already have a replacement in mind (an HP EliteBook, to run Linux on), but I'm a Linux fanboy at heart (Android FTW!!!!).
The announcement of the death of Steve Jobs today showed how the world has changed, because from what I see online, on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, the outpouring of grief and memory is not reminiscent of the passing of a CEO and inventor, but the passing of a head of state. Steve, in that context, was the president of the nation of Apple (and some would say the head of its church).
But that's really how this feels. And I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, not even that it's a good thing. But in a world that is so dependent on technology, not just for us Geeks, but for the everyday person, it is fitting that some of the Greats - Jobs, Gates, Wozniak - are seen with such a view. Earlier today, I was listening to the Macbreak Weekly podcast, and a clip was played of Obama in an interview saying that Steve had given him an iPad a few days before its release, and a comment being made about "when the President of the United States name drops Steve Jobs"... it says something about the state of the world. Wired.com on its tribute page has a quote from Obama about Steve's passing. The modern age, where heads of corporations are heads of state.
This is also the start of the end of an era in some ways, the first of the consumer computer pioneers to pass. He was instrumental in the creation of the PC industry, and reinventing it with the Macintosh and then OSX. Regardless of how you feel in the OS wars, by pushing the GUI and then OSX and then iOS he forced the competition to step up their games. And I think it also says something in the way rivals/competitors such as Bill Gates, Larry Page,and Sergey Brin expressed their condolences. Google's search page, below the search box simply had:
Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011
If there is an afterlife, I'm sure that he'll shortly be making the halos look a bit better, and the teleportation will take .00000001ms instead of .00001ms, and you'll arrive at your destination with chocolate cheesecake. RIP, Mr. Jobs. |
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| Announcement! |
[Sep. 27th, 2011|08:40 am] |
Ottawa, ON - Esteemed writer, extreme unicyclist, and lover, Nick Wilson announced today via his Livejournal blog the creation of two new blogs that he intends to use as creative and personal outlets.
"I've been a Livejournal user for about five years," the dashing 32-year old explained via Skype from his Fortress of Unitude in the Hintonburg area of Ottawa. "While the platform has served me well, it was time to branch out. Sure, it's fine for my musings about life, work, and so forth, but we found that test audiences were thrown off by mixing my poetry and prose with my musings about my life. If you're looking for the Thursday haiku, you're not going to be interested in the 3-some I had with Jessica Alba and Dame Judi Dench the night before."
"So my creative team and I have started two new sites, which we're very excited about. The first is a simple daily 'Todo' list site called 'Nick Has To Do...' Simply put, it lists a few things I have in my itinerary for the day, giving my legions of adoring fans a quick daily insight into my life."
"The second site, 'Recontales' will host my creative writing, prose and poetry both. And as always, my Livejournal site will contain the same indepth look at my life as it always has."
Wilson ended the announcement to a flurry of cheers, and reportedly celebrated the launch with a breakfast attended by a few close friends. |
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| Slacker! |
[Sep. 24th, 2011|11:38 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Carbon Leaf, "This is My Song" | ] |
It's true, I'm a slacker. I haven't written anything in days... well, maybe a couple haiku for Iris' Facebook wall, but that's it. It's not a lot of money or revenge, as the saying goes. Having said that, I do feel like I've been productive. I managed to get down to the computer store finally and get some supplies that I needed. The local comp store is in the process of moving to a new location, so I biked downtown. Once again, I love living somewhere where I can get anywhere I need to go without a car. Gorram, that's a nice feeling :)
And considering that after last night's reveling with friends (1 birthday party, and 1 "TGIF Party") I stayed in bed until 11am, and napped a couple hours this afternoon/evening, I managed to get stuff done. I figured out a usable (for the moment) office setup. Not ideal, definately going to need a new desk, but for the moment it'll do. I have dual head using my Mac, which is always nice. I got our server running again, and installed the LAMP ("Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP") stack, so The Chad and I can develop. I miss using a Linux desktop, once I get a real desk again I'll prolly setup a "new" machine of some sort dual-booting Windows 8 and Linux... Windows 'cause I'd like to play with some of the dev tools on it. And maybe the occasional game. Very occasional :P
Also hungout with some cool folks on G+ for a bit. Need to get over my natural shyness a bit. I've found myself in hangouts twice in the past week with people that I've only known from listening/watching them on various podcasts, and when I join a public hangout I'm feel like I'm still listening to a podcast :P That's not what it's for, after all.
\/\/007! Writing done! I need to find a way to cross-post to G+ as well. I have my LJ acct set to post to Facebook (where I'm ridiculed for still using LJ) but for the moment I'm gonna have to copy-paste to G+ C'est la vie ;) |
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| Typity typity typity... |
[Sep. 21st, 2011|08:40 am] |
I've got 6 minutes to get something written, 360 seconds, give or take. But, as Ford Prefect always said, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly-so!" I'm not sure if that is relevant in this case or not...
But in any case, fingers are moving, and hitting keys (bonus!) which is how one writes, if one is to believe another one, that I've mentioned here ad-nauseum. *cough*Merlin Mann*cough* And so I type.
But after that... what? I have nothing of substance to say (you should be used to that by now, dear reader. Yes, you. The one with the glasses and the chablis). Two minutes to go. Then I walk out the door, to the store, grab my daily dose of chemicals designed to hype me up through unatural means and marketing, and then off to work, and text editors, and punk rawk, and email, and altogether too little reading or writing.
Time's up. |
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| Internet Coolness |
[Sep. 20th, 2011|12:25 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Planet Smashers, "Until You Go Away (Triple Baconator) | ] |
Finished lecture #1 of the Rose-Hulman class on Android Development. Even moving at break-neck speed through the first demo app, I found it easier, better organized, and more informative than the Sam's Programming Android in 24 Hours that I bought a couple months ago. Oh well. It's pretty cool that these different universities offer lectures and class materials for free. I won't get credit for the classes, naturally, but since I A) already have a degree, and B) have found that the real world places less emphasis on degrees and more on skill set, it's still cool. After all, I hold an English Honours degree (literature concentration), and I work as a web developer in PHP.
2nd Cool thing online tonight was on Google Plus. The host of a web TV show I watch weekly (I won't say which one, since I want to avoid this sounding like an “OMFGHEISSOAWESOMEANDAMAZINGANDILOVEHISSHOWANDHETALKEDTO*ME*!!!!111”) on Revision 3 started a Hangout to demonstrate some social media stuff to his brother. It was cool, because this celebrity (mostly web though it may be) was able to interact with his fans directly, and though 10 people is a relatively large group for a conversation per se, it's still small enough that someone of interest can interact with others in a meaningful way. Or just bandy about ideas on what makes a video go viral, or not.
Ok, almost 12:30. Bed time. 6:30am comes way too soon... it seems like only 6 hours away or something... |
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| Huzzah-eugh :( |
[Sep. 19th, 2011|08:38 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Planet Smashers - "UPS of America" | ] |
Good news being that with the help of awesome peoples, $140 was added on to the Terry Fox "Fuck Cancer" Fund. Ok, it's not actually called that, but I tihnk it's a great name nonetheless. I managed the 10K in about an hour on the uni, non-stop. Good times, lots of people.
Alas, I went home to a massive headache... the fact that including the travel to/from the run site I did close to 18K yesterday prolly didn't help, but I've felt like ass ever since. An ass with a headache. I slept on the ouch for a few hours yesterday afternoon, watched wayyy too much Top Gear, and went to bed before 9pm. Oh well, c'est la vie. Next comes work. Hopefully some writing and/or coding.
I've started watching Stanford U's "CS106A-Programming Methodology" lectures, in the hopes of brushing up a bit both on coding practice in general, and getting back in the groove with Java. I've been coding professionally for a year now, but in PHP which is a bit different. Not compiled for one, and not useful really for desktop/mobile development. Very useful online though.
Ok, work time. |
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| Damn it... |
[Sep. 17th, 2011|11:34 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Rude City Riot, "Got a Heartache" | ] |
I haven't written anythiing of substance in days. True, I've been busy, and tired. And in a mosh pit. But the important thing is that I'm still here. Well, briefly. Have to head out, apparently today's Taste of Wellington street thing promises to be awesome, and I have to get on the unicycle. I've only been out once in the past week I tihnk, and tomorrow I have 10k to do on it at the Terry Fox Run... so... eep.
Plus you should totally sponsor me. Because Fuck Cancer. Seriously.
http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=1243882&langPref=en-CA
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| Part II: The Revenge! |
[Sep. 14th, 2011|10:24 pm] |
Hmmm... Cookies... Yes, I'm baking cookies. Sugar cookies. And. They. Are. Awesome! And there's more coming! Oh baby, oh baby!
I need to start writing poetry again. It's been a long time since I've written anything poetical of substance, and I feel like I should. Besides, my compendium of poetry is late. By a lot. Like... 4 years. And a bit.
Yeah, it's like, really fucking late.
I've also been working on this post for an hour and a half with out typing anything, so I'm gonna quit while I'm... um... here? ;) |
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| Oops. |
[Sep. 14th, 2011|08:31 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Kupek-"Heard About You" (it's stuck in my head now) | ] |
So I skipped yesterday. Oops. The important thing isn't that I didn't write yesterday, it's that I'm writing today.
Quick aside. Watched The Princess Bride (again) last night. Afterwards, on Twitter saw stuff about Saturday's local Hintonburg festivities, including Halifax rapper Jesse Dangerously, who I had only heard of as a guest on Kupek's song "Heard About You" (You might remember Kupek as from his stint as Bryan Lee O'Malley, whom you might remember as the author of Scott Pilgrim). Anyways, I go to J.D's website, and he has a song called "Holocaust Cloak". In reference to the song he says "I am hoping one day to be recognized as the rapper with the most ever references to The Princess Bride." And I can respect that.
And a quick pondering about Windows 8, which I have barely seen.
I think the problem with using Windows 8 as a tablet OS isn't so much the interface. Microsoft is putting a touch-based interface on Windows 8 for tablets and such, but it makes me wonder about interfaces for the applications. iOS and Android work on tablets because it is assumed that all apps are either going to
A) be designed with a smaller, phone sized touch screen in mind, or
B) will have been designed with a tablet in mind
But if you take random Windows app, and try to run it on a Windows 8 tablet, I can't imagine that the experience would be anything but subpar.
Unless Microsoft takes a page from Apple and Google and says "Yes, these tablets are Windows 8-based, but they're not Windows 8", in the same way that iOS is Mac OSX (which is Unix) but with a different set of APIs for app development, and Android is Linux but with its own apis etc. THAT I think would make sense...
But in that case, why not just keep using Windows Phone 7 as the basis for the mobile?
Anyways, that's just me ponderings in the morning before I've had caffeine (haven't even finished my OJ yet). I should prolly delve seeper into this whole "Windows 8" thing before making any more ponderings about it. ;) |
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| Writer's Block |
[Sep. 12th, 2011|10:54 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Hinchey House. | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blank | ] |
| [ | music |
| | They Might Be Giants, "End of the Tour" | ] |
So today I have writer's block. It's not that I know what I want to write, it's that I don't have anyting in particular that I want to write about. However, I'm trying something that I heard (yes, from Merlin Mann on Back to Work... http://5by5.tv/b2w) which is that to write one doesn't think, one simply moves their fingers. And so I am, across the keyboard and all. Though I briefly adjourn to reach for my glass.
I'm doing better this week, and I only have the vaguest ideas why. Because I don't have to see her this week? Because I don't have to be in the place where we had so much joy in the past? Doesn't matter. What matters is the here and now. It doesn't matter how I fucked up in the past, or even how she fucked up. She's not here, I'm not there. Moving forward is the only option. I believe the correct term is to "nut up."
But at the very least I'm writing again, and though it's nothign of substance, damn it feels good to write again. I miss the creation of it. I've always loved the creation of data. There's always been something magical about taking empty space on a drive, and slowly eroding that free space until it's full, and the concept that I can use that space by hitting buttons on a machine in sequence, the symbols printed on those buttons becoming encoded and placed on the storage medium is just insane. The sheer volume of data created, I mean, how many megabytes of words have I created over my lifetime? All the essays, emails, status updates, tweets, IMs? How many floppys would I need? A single Zip disk? I'm sure a cdrom is overkill, and there's no way a DVD is required. If we start talking photos and video... well, then we get into the hundreds of gigabytes ;)
But now I find myself nodding off, and needing sleep. But the important thing is that I wrote today. As the great author Jackson Warfield says, "It's easy to be a bad writer, but it's hard to wake up each day and devote a chunk of your life to bad writing." But I'm working on it.
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