Saturday, June 20, 2009

Sigh. Goodbye, Radio. Quoting this post by Userland Software, in case you haven't heard: Radio UserLand service closing UserLand has decided to close the Radio UserLand and Salon Radio services as of December 31, 2009. You can continue to use your Radio weblog hosted with UserLand until the end of the year. If you plan on continuing to use Radio to publish your blog, we would recommend that you look for an alternative web host if your weblog is being published to a UserLand server. You can use the FTP option [1] in Radio to publish to your own server. The closure of Radio will also mean that the UserLand-hosted comments, trackbacks and stats tracking will be unavailable after the shutdown date. If you have any questions, please send them to customerservice@userland.com UserLand Software [1] http://radio.userland.com/userGuide/prefs/1/5 To see the original post with more context: UserLand Product News: Radio UserLand 8:35:27 PM    comment []

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Life Goes On, But (Mostly) Not Here Once again it's been quite a while since I posted anything to this blog.  But I haven't lost the blogging habit altogether: I've been posting things somewhere else. I was faithful for several years to Radio Userland as my blogging venue.  (And I will always remember it fondly: it was my first.)  But the time came when I could no longer resist the allure of a less familiar pretty face, and I have begun a new relationship ... with LiveJournal. In case you're not familiar with it, LiveJournal is a hybrid: a combination of blogging and social networking.  I rather like it (is this New Relationship Energy talking?). My new blog can be found here: http://edelsont.livejournal.com.  You will follow it avidly. And has this Radio blog been relegated to the dustbin of history?  By no means!  It's just become more specialized.  This will be (for the foreseeable future) my "geek blog". In other words, what I will plan to post here, from now on, is computer technical stuff.  Even some postings on software might go on LiveJournal, if they are directed at an audience of (potential) users of the software, rather than at the sort of people who program, or otherwise work with computers professionally.  So if you're hard core, stick around!  Well, visit me at LJ too, but come back here when you have the yen to get down into the bits and bytes. I did create one post "over there" which some might think, by my own criteria, belonged "over here".  It's about my programming language preferences (hint: the title is "In Good Taste: Very Schemely"), and you can find it at http://edelsont.livejournal.com/1038.html.  Take a look, and judge for yourself where it belongs.  I myself would say that that that posting actually is in the right place: that it isn't directed at a technical audience.  The only reasons it gives for my preferences are non-technical ones.  I was trying to give the non-geeks a little taste of what it's like to care about such things. I hope that you enjoy the new blog.  And that you continue to enjoy this one, too ... if you're into that sort of thing. Categorie(s) for this post: Blogging, Radio Userland, Programming Languages. 3:45:34 PM    comment []

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

My Dog Died Toofus was a fifteen-year-old retired racing greyhound, who had been part of my household for five and a half years. Fifteen is really old: the median longevity of the breed is a little more than thirteen years. He had various health problems, particularly gradual loss of some of the function of the hind legs; so I knew that he was slowing down, and that I should not be surprised if he came to the end of the road within the next year, or even in any given month. But there was nothing acute, nothing to indicate that it was imminent .... ... until 5 am on Sunday, October 12, when I was awakened by noises, and went and found that things were a good deal worse. He had fallen, struggled to get up, and fallen again -- several times, apparently, because all four legs had places where skin had come off as he staggered against the legs of the dining room table. This was on a hard-floored surface. When I got him on to the carpet, he was able to stand and walk. But shakily. I began to face the question of whether it was time to euthanize him. I talked to various people on the phone. Meanwhile, I was observing that he was somewhat stabilized, but not showing any signs of returning to the previous day's level of functioning. He could get up, and walk around some; but he fell down several more times. I became more or less clear that it was the right thing to let him go, to "send him to Rainbow Bridge", as the current expression has it; but I thought that it could wait for the next day, when the regular veterinarians would be open. Then, in the evening, it got worse yet: he fell down again, and, after twenty minutes, had not made any attempt to get up. So then it became clear, intellectually but also emotionally, that the more merciful thing was to grant him his honorable discharge, and do it quickly. I ended up using a "pet ambulance" service to get him to the Cary pet emergency clinic. He was given the lethal injection, an overdose of a sedative, at about 11 pm. It was over in less than a minute. I cried some, there and then. The next day, I was sad, but not intensely so; I was at peace with my decision. However, a month later, I am under no illusion that I am done grieving. I loved that dog. Categorie(s) for this post: Greyhounds 2:20:24 PM    comment []

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Gettin' Down with the Large Hadron Collider You gotta watch this. Trust me. Large Hadron Rap 5:03:45 PM    comment []

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

An Invitation to Read About My Spiritual Journey Actually, my home page at The Well has had, for some time, a link called "Notes on my spiritual journey".  But the linked-to document was in plain text, and not so easy to read. Now, there's a newer version up, in HTML, and the content has been revised a good bit, too.  You can find it via the home page, or at http://www.well.com/user/edelsont/personal/my-spiritual-journey.html. It offers some insight into the "Quaker" and "Taoist" parts of my self-description (in the masthead of this blog).  It doesn't say anything about the "poly" part, but I hope to address that soon. My Spiritual Journey may also be the only page on the Web with links to all of these Wikipedia pages (among others): Philip Berrigan Limit of a Function Andy Sipowicz At first glance, my spiritual journey may look like a random walk.  But there's some interesting scenery, and good mental exercise, along the way. Categorie(s) for this post: About me, Philosophy, Quakerism, Writing. 11:05:25 AM    comment []

Friday, July 25, 2008

Anybody Want to Test-drive a Moneydance Extension? I closed the last post by predicting that my software page was going to grow.  Well, technically, it hasn't; it's gotten smaller.  But that's because its previous content (a general description of my recent software projects) has been moved to a new location: http://www.well.com/user/edelsont/software/as-developer.html. The new content at the old location is more of an index to my software-related pages: three of them, so far. Which brings me to my main point: the newest of these pages describes a Moneydance extension I've written.  Yes, after talking a lot about extensions I planned to write, I've finally got one working.  It's called "Security Price Entry", and its purpose is to make it easier to record the prices of your stocks, bonds, and/or mutual funds from your broker's monthly statements. The description of it can be found here: http://www.well.com/user/edelsont/software/moneydance/my-extensions/security-price-entry.html. Now the bad news: it isn't ready for general distribution yet.  Actually, I'm hoping to find a beta tester or two. The ideal beta tester would be another developer of Moneydance extensions.  But any Moneydance user who's interested in such a capability should be able to take it for a spin, if I send it to you in pre-built form. Categorie(s) for this post: Personal Finance Software. 5:55:58 PM    comment []

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Something New on My Home Page Until a few days aga, my home page at The Well didn't have anything on it about my interests and activities in computer technology.  Now it does. I've created a software page with a general overview of the tools I'm using, and the projects I'm using them on ... or hope to use them on in the future. Expect this page to grow. 4:11:12 PM    comment []

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