|
| |
GIGO: words unreadable aloud
|
Sunday 30 January 2005
|
Miscellaneous Experiments
Been experimenting with CSS menus, images for backgrounds, servlets in jython and scala, and re-organizing. I hope to move this weblog to my home server one of these days, but it'll be some time before that's ready.
Golly, I just (two weeks ago) blew past my three-years-blogging anniversary, and didn't even notice.
Saw the most spectacular rainbow Thursday or Friday, on the way in to work. And a great sunset-ish view on the way home: dark clouds covering almost the whole sky, but some clouds above the ridge to the west, lit up by bright sunshine just starting to tint reddish.
At home, the manzanita and the heather is in bloom; and we had hummingbirds and titmice in the yard today. We're clearing out the garage-room so that we can lay down some actual flooring. Lots of work to do this weekend.
1:36:00 AM
|
|
|
|
Wednesday 26 January 2005
|
Nuncocentric
I decided to coin a word. Tonight, zero hits on google.
Here's my bozos-list email about it:
Hey, all you Latinophiles, sesquipedalians, and neologians, I'm
not sure there's a word for this, but I'm trying to find or coin one.
It's related to egocentric and ethnocentric.
It's related to TWIAVBP (The World Is A Very Big Place), the acronym
that the AFU-ers (alt.folklore.urban) used to use to tell people that
not everyone's environment is the same as yours.
But it's about time. "NOW-centric".
People have ranted and railed, whined and wailed, for millennia about
how terrible things are Right Now, how near the end of the world is if
we don't [DO SOMETHING], how important it is to change this terrible
course we're on ... and it's always about Right Now. There's a great
(probably apocryphal) quote about how wild the younger generation is,
how it is clearly leading to the demise of all civilization on earth,
and so on, and it turns out to be a quote written by a Greek guy in
1000 BC or something.
So what's the word for this too-common lack of temporal perspective,
this failure to realize that things have been worse, been better, and
that Right Now isn't (usually) the brink of terrible disaster?
One suggestion was that this sounded too much like
an obsession with the sisters in a convent; another one
(from Jamie) was:
The Latin "prope" meaning: near, nearly, not far from, just now,
closely, not long from now. All of which seem apt, and I feel the
resultant word, "propecentric" to have a more pleasant ring to it, and
to sound less made-up despite its manufactured nature.
Though I agree about "propecentric"'s more pleasant ring,
I feel ever so slightly more inclined toward nuncocentric,
because I think it'd be slightly easier for the unfamiliar
to guess its meaning. (Google for Latin nunc English, for
example.) "Prop..." just seems like it's too closely related
to too many other concepts in English for it even to be
recognizable as Latin-inspired.
11:56:46 PM
|
|
|
|
Sunday 16 January 2005
|
Getting 7 Frog Habits Done
Two or more years ago, I listened to an (abridged, I read later) audio version of Covey's first "7 Habits" book. Lots of good stuff in there, most of which I didn't apply. A few months later, I read Brian Tracy's "Eat That Frog" book (which has the advantage of being a very quick read). Finally, Robert Allen's "Getting Things Done" methodology is showing up in several places on the Web, especially at Merlin Mann's 43 Folders weblog.
Coincidentally, "Eat That Frog" is today on the books-sidebar of the 43 Folders site.
In
Mann's year-end review, one commenter suggested "One of my "attractive nuisances" is thinking about how I'd design a mash-up of GTD and the 7 Habits", which was what I've been doing a little thinking about also.
Tracy's Frog method seems a bit oversimplified. And GTD's 43 folders is way too many, requiring way too much specificity (as far as I can tell, not having read the book). GTD and 7H are somewhat complementary; I see the "F" (3rd) of the main 7H as in some sense "containing" the scheduling aspects which can be GTD-like, or can use the "Mishrogo" method from 7H.
To be a little less cryptic than I was last time I mentioned it:
PEF WUSS is my mnemonic for the 7 Habits.
- P - be Proactive
- E - begin with the End in mind
- F - put First things first
- W - think "Win-win"
- U - seek first to Understand, then to be understood
- S - Synergize
- S - Sharpen the saw
Much of this is pretty high-level, and the F is where you do detailed scheduling.
That's where the Mishrogo Weedapeval comes in. This is Covey's six steps of scheduling:
- Mish - write a MISSion statement
- Ro - list your various ROles
- Go - for each role, what are your GOals?
- Wee - plan only a WEEk at a time
- Dap - if situations change, aDAPt (with integrity)
- Eval - EVALuate how you did
I found a nice GTD summary here at the Minezone Wiki. Had some comments on it which I'll put somewhere else.
One other place where I made up a similar silly mnemonic: a little poem that I call WashAdJeff MadMonAdJack.
12:14:38 PM
|
|
|
|
Tuesday 11 January 2005
|
Phil Wadler's Newer-than-new "Links" Web Programming Language
As I mentioned last February when I started it, I have another weblog that's only visible inside the intranet where I work. That weblog's name is Pyscerocha, named after the five programming languages Python, Scala, Erlang, OCaml, and Haskell.
Last week, a discussion started at Lambda the Ultimate Weblog, about the new (actually, vaporware at the moment) Links programming language that prominent researcher Phil Wadler has sketched out. I found it amusing that the Links intro (PDF) came so close to mentioning all five of the Pyscerocha languages, only missing the "OCa" part of OCaml. (I.e., he does mention ML.)
Tim Sweeney wrote
This announcement perhaps marks one of the major events in programming language history, which go on to shape the field for decades to come. It's wonderful to see Philip Wadler at the center of this effort; he is one of the few who have the broad experience and credibility to make it a success.
I certainly agree with the second half of that. As to the first, could be accurate, could be a wee bit hyperbolic. We'll see. I'd sure prefer that it turn out to be accurate.
11:17:49 PM
|
|
|
|
Thursday 6 January 2005
|
New Year, New Browser
Finally installed firefox on my Mac where Radio UserLand lives. Got most of it configured like I have my two PC's (work and home). Took way too long to find the "type-ahead find" pref (it's under "Accessibility"), and I still can't find out where to make it do its search only on links instead of on any text of the page.
I've been doing further experiments with my home machine as web server. Jython, Tomcat, Scala, tiddlywiki, and diamond wiki. We'll see what I end up deploying.
This posting is mostly an experiment to make sure that firefox works with Radio UserLand. It does, and it's better than Mozilla: the editor window is actually using a fixed-width font that's large enough to be visible.
12:37:27 AM
|
|
|
|
© Copyright
2007
Doug Landauer
.
Last update:
07/2/6; 12:43:13
.
|
|
|
|
|