Blog Archives
Technological limitations
Yesterday the winds came. They blew down fences, trees, power lines, and my internet. Today I made lasagne in bulk. In fact, I think the only practical thing I did today that wasn’t lasagne was shopping for more stuff to make lasagne. I’m not even confident it’s going to be good lasagne, I tried a new technique a little old lady told me about and frankly I’m not sure there was enough cheese.
But I should still try to make up for the missed post yesterday. Just because it was physically impossible for me to post anything is no excuse to not catch up. And I think at least one of the Daily Post blogs was a decent idea for something to write about, so I can go back and write about it.
That’s going to have to wait another day or two, though, because I’m surprisingly busy all of a sudden. It’s good news for me, but bad news for my blog. Well, seems like everything’s a trade-off.
I promise you four posts in the next three days, even if that’s four on Monday. For now though I’m going to sleep, it’s been crazy today.
Random software review
An interesting program I’ve been using for the last few weeks (months? When did I install that thing, anyway?) is the Zim Desktop Wiki, which works pretty much like a cross between a notepad program and a, well, wiki. Making new pages is as simple as linking to ones that don’t exist yet. Linking to a page can be as easy as placing your cursor within a word, pressing ctrl-L, and hitting “enter” twice. (Though usually it takes a little more than that.)
I love it. It’s a little awkward at first, but once you learn the keyboard shortcuts it’s fairly smooth sailing. I used it to keep track of my wanderings through the SubNet Exploration Experience and soon had an in-depth, cross-referenced database of everything I’d found in there.
It even supports tags, which I love in ways that are probably illegal in some states.
I found it in the Ubuntu software repositories when I was looking for pretty much exactly that kind of program, but it also has Mac & even Windows versions for people who use, you know, those sorts of operating systems.
As yet, it has not tried to conquer the Earth. That I’ve noticed, at least.
Hey, they noticed!
Congress apparently finally noticed that they’re pissing everyone off.
Sorry, that’s all you get today. If I’m feeling better tomorrow I’ll actually say something for myself.
Friends help you move…
Helping friends move this weekend. I thought I’d still find something interesting to say, but after thinking about it for over an hour, I’ve got nothing. Since I’m going back for more work tomorrow, it’s likely there won’t be anything new and interesting til Monday.
For tonight, I’ll just say that I’m surprised by how tired I am. I don’t really feel like I earned that.
Copping out again.
Well, at least I have the excuse that I’m still sick. Getting better, but so very slowly.
What really bugs me though, is that I had something I wanted to write about when I finally got out of bed around noon. Well, maybe tomorrow I’ll have enough sense to do my writing when I can, rather than hoping to do it when it’s convenient.
Learning curve
Topic #307:
What skill would you most like to learn in 2012?
I’d really like to learn to turn my vague ideas into concrete reality. If that’s not practical, if that’s too much to ask, then I’d like to learn to flap my arms and fly to the moon.
Sick, just punching the clock here
I’m sick and no good at the thinking today. So here’s this just so I still made a post today, now back to tea and drugs. Later.
World building
I’ve been thinking of doing a weekly serial story. I want to do more fiction, which pretty much means I want to do any fiction at all, but I’m really bad at coming up with plots and stories and often it feels like the more I try to prepare before writing something the worse it comes out.
So I thought maybe I’d come up with some characters and settings, and then just make stuff up as I went. Add a chapter a week until I wrote myself into a corner. So I’ve been dreaming up stuff for a space opera setting and generally messing around all day.
I still don’t know if I’m actually going to try that, to be honest I think I have more fun dreaming up spaceships and cultures and strange new worlds than actually doing anything with them. But I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a Saturday.
“Crepuscular” is my new word for today.
From Bad Astronomy, a couple of awesome photos showing how rays of sunlight through clouds seem to fan out from the Earth’s surface, but from orbit you can see that they are practically parallel. Awesome.
Look, you got a nice long post yesterday! Just click the link to the astronomer’s site and look at the pretty pictures. I’ll have something better tomorrow.
Look out for the petrifying gaze
Seems like it’s been a while since I did a Daily Post topic. Let’s fix that.
Topic #289:
What makes someone beautiful?
The old adage about beholders seems to fit very well. In fact, I’d say that as I change as a person, the people around me appear to change, too. I’ve more than once met someone and thought them ugly, only for them to grow beautiful as I got to know them. The reverse has also happened.
Too much going on just now. I really need to write a big long post one of these days soon.
If only I could blog in my sleep
It often seems to me that the best times for me to write, the times when I’m most productive and have the least trouble getting stuff down, is either right after I wake up, or before I go to bed, both times when I’d rather be asleep. This seems to imply to me that the truly best time for me to write would be while I’m actually sleeping. Given the strange dream of half-buildings I had last night, I look forward to technology making this possible.
Yeah, I know. Look I agreed to write a post every day, I never made any promises about those posts being worth reading. It was either this or five pages of incoherent rant about protests and politics, and frankly I’m too tired for that tonight.
Not much of a post
Feels like I’m phoning it in here, but I’m in the middle of the Ubuntu upgrade and can’t do much with this computer right now. I didn’t think it would take this long. You’d think I’d have learned by now to wait a few days before I start the upgrade, but no, once again I jumped right in when there’d be a huge rush swamping the servers.
Now off to read a movie or watch a book, or whatever the hell people used to do to kill time at home in the evenings. I’ll try to have something more substantial tomorrow, unless the new operating system turns out to be completely broken or something.
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 