From Tom Sawyer:

...Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

It is common in the open source world to hear that someone wrote some software to “scratch their own itch.” The implication is usually that they wrote the code to meet some need (or annoyance?) they had, and it may, by mere coincidence, be useful to others as well. Sometimes this phrase also used to excuse the software or lack of support for it. It may also be used to provide guidance for those wanting to write software: do something useful for yourself.

I think there is a considerable amount of wisdom in this approach. Nothing motivates a person like a genuine interest in a project. The best learning (in my non-scientific opinion) occurs when a person is driven by their own interest. Outside pressures can only do so much.

I often see Project Euler or some kind of “programming koans” offered up as suggestions to improve one’s programming skills. I find these to be unhelpful for me, as I cannot make myself be interested in them. In fact, I should not need to force myself to be interested at all: that pushes the activity into the “work” category and the exercise has already failed.

For programmers, we should be writing code which we want to write, solving problems we want to solve, and producing something we want to make.

Along the way, we may accidentally learn all kinds of new things, but only because those things are on the path of building our project. It is not about making something useful, or good, or desirable. It is about the joy of creation.

That does not mean it is all bunnies and sunshine, though. I have hit my head against the wall more times over software I was writing for fun than any homework problem. Why? Because they were problems I intensely desired to overcome – for myself.

The point, in case I have not beaten it to death already, is that you should write code for you. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect or won’t compile on anyone else’s machine. It doesn’t matter if twenty other programs exist that do the same thing. All that matters is that you write it. Learning is merely a side effect.

Okay. This is a serious post.

I am a white guy. I self-identify as one. Of course, I doubt I am completely white (I am not even sure what that means, really), but I look like I am. This means I am pretty much the worst person to talk about race and ethnicity and skin color and whatever, because I guess white guys have done enough talking about that and they mostly suck at it.

Alright, that first paragraph came out a little weird. Let me instead begin with a story. The “world” in which I live is pretty white. I know that is the case because I would notice if it weren’t. I noticed the other day when my girlfriend and I went to an area we don’t go to very often and I noticed a lot of people around were black. I say “black” the way I say I am “white,” to indicate that their skin or my skin is what is mostly accepted as being one or the other.

So it occurred to me, as I noticed that there were a lot of black people around, that I really wish I didn’t notice that. Today my girlfriend and I went to a restaurant and I believe there was one other white person there, the rest were Asian. I wish I didn’t know that. I don’t want to care. I don’t want my girlfriend (she isn’t white) to notice that most of the people around are white. I don’t want to notice that a lot of the people around where I live are Hispanic.

What do I mean by that? I mean I wish I lived somewhere where that was normal. Yes, it is true that I am getting better. I am actually amazingly glad that my girlfriend has a different culture from my own. It has given me (I hope) a much better perspective on things, especially “race” (not sure what that is, really). But the fact is that I immediately notice when I am surrounded by people who do not look like me. And I begin to wonder if that is what other people feel like, too. Is that how my girlfriend feels most of the time? (I asked, she said it was.)

But what is a white guy to do about it? Perhaps I am too self-conscious, but doesn’t everything white people do seem to come off as either pretentious (“I am so much better than you, so I am going to help you”) or like a wannabe (like, I wannabe a gangsta). Maybe it comes off other negative ways, too. But sincerity…I do not know how to do that. I mean, I know how to be sincere. I am sincere. But I do not know how to show that. And I know I am immediately critical of others trying to do the same. What is wrong with me?

When are we all going to be able to just laugh at all this? At how unsophisticated our treatment of race and ethnicity and culture really is today? I really hope it is soon.

This is weird. Every time I try to type gosu, my fingers type gosub. Especially weird since it has probably been a decade since I did anything in BASIC.

Apparently, BASIC really does mutilate the mind.

France still controls two little islands off the coast of Canada?

I’ve learned my new thing for today. Phew! Glad that is over with!

Haha, Mr. Jim Dunlop. Ha ha.

Okay, so, I am bad at documenting things. I didn’t think to take pictures until after it was done, so there are no before/during pictures. Just picture it with a little resistor instead of the wires and potentiometer.

I followed the instructions here for adding a “Q” adjuster knob like this one.

Why is it that my hand soap lists its ingredients, while my dish soap (which I have a much higher chance of ingesting), does not?

That just doesn’t make sense.

Ran across this intriguing reversal over here.

Yes, let us once again take a trip through rosy fields of wordly trees.

• Ambergrised – (uncertain)
• Argence – silveryness?
• Apothegm – pithy instructive saying, maxim
• Benison – blessing, benediction
• Catafalque – funeral canopy
• Chancrous – having an ulcer
• Chrism – consecrated ointment
• Crepitation – crackling
• Etiolated – blanched, withered
• Formication – feeling of ants on skin
• Fructified – made fruitful, productive
• Gavotte – old French dance
• Knurling – small projection, knob
• Incarnadine – dyed red
• Inchoate – partial, just begun
• Innominate – unnamed
• Lambent – flickering, radiant
• Limned – rendered artistically
• Malison – curse, (antonym of benison)
• Mephic – (uncertain) ²
• Nacre – mother-of-pearl
• Nacreous – like mother-of-pearl
• Obbligato – persistent subordinate motif
• Palliation – mitigation, hiding
• Paucity – scarcity, insufficiency
• Preterite – in the past
• Redolent – scented, sweetly odorous
• Roynish – mangy, mean
• Sabulous – gritty, sandy
• Stertorously – snoring, noisily breathing
• Susurrus – whisper, sound of murmuring
• Telic – purposive
• Theurgy – miracle, sorcery
• Thetic – setting forth, like a thesis
• Threnody – song of lamentation, dirge
• Travertine – white calcium carbonate

Ambergrised: Ambergris is “A substance of the consistence of wax, found floating in the Indian Ocean and other parts of the tropics, and also as a morbid secretion in the intestines of the sperm whale, which is believed to be in all cases its true origin. In color it is white, ash-gray, yellow, or black, and often variegated like marble. The floating masses are sometimes from sixty to two hundred and twenty-five pounds in weight. It is wholly volatilized as a white vapor at 212 Fahrenheit, and is highly valued in perfumery.” Make of that what you will.

Mephic: Really not certain on this one. Closest thing I could find is “mephis”, but it is more likely to mean something close to “mephitic”, which means noxious, poisonous, foul-smelling, etc.

Check this out.

It’s so wildly inaccurate is makes me giggle.

The little Mars lander that could has ceased to respond.

I’ve been reading the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant lately (yes, I am a sucker for any books with ‘chronicles’ in the name”) and I’ve learned some new words as a result:

• Abysm – like an abyss but deeper
• Aliment – nourishment, food
• Anile – like an old woman, imbecile
• Attar – fragrant essence
• Cerements – waxy wrappings for the dead
• Chasuble – an ecclesiastical vestment
• Coruscating – sparkling
• Extirpate – root out, exterminate
• Febrile – feverish
• Gelid – cold as ice
• Hebetude – dullness
• Inanition – being empty, starvation
• Incondign – unworthy
• Intaglio – engraving
• Irenic – pacific
• Leonine – lionlike
• Malefic – harmful in purpose
• Moiling – toiling, turbulent
• Oriflamme – rallying object or ideal
• Orison – prayer
• Patina – thin layer, incrustation
• Pennon – flag, pennant
• Penumbra – shadow between darkness and light
• Periapt – amulet, charm
• Puissant – powerful
• Roborant – restorative, invigorating medicine
• Rictus – expanse of a mouth
• Surcease – stop, termination
• Suppurate – secrete pus
• Suzerainty – supremacy
• Unanodyned – uneased, unsoothed (this word appears to be made up)
• Vermeil – bright red
• Viand – food, provisions (in the plural)

Interface + interact = interfact?

I have started keeping an eye on this map because it seems like I feel these things all the time.

it’s just your fault, that’s all

Has the LHC destroyed the world yet?