Posts from — March 2005

Slate has an interesting article about the US memory championships. It’s pretty amazing that people can do that.

Here are some expressions and stuff that a lot of people use but I don’t like (the expressions and stuff, not the people). Nothing against you if you use these, just my opinion.

1. Using “heart” as a transitive verb. Heart is a noun. End of story. You can use ‘hearten’ as a verb if you want. In fact, if I were to make heart a verb, I’d make it signify a function of the circulatory system, e.g. “I heart my blood through my arteries to distribute oxygen and other important materials”. Now, I think that the transitive version of “heart” is meant to be a stronger word than “like” (e.g. “I like pancakes”) while reserving the word “love” for when you really mean it (e.g. “I love those pants!”).
2. The word “Yay” as anything but an exclamation. It’s an interjection. “Yay for x” doesn’t make any sense. Who or what is yaying? Now, granted it would be valid to say “hooray for beer”, but hooray is also a transitive verb. Just use “yay” as an interjection. So, instead of saying “Yay for homework”, just yell “Yay!” and follow it closely with “The preceding exclamation was a result of my appreciation for homework”. Really, try it.
3. I forgot what #3 was, keep going.
4. This one’s fairly specific, but Jen and Vicki often prepend a seemingly decorative character to away messages and things. For example “*sleeping” or “~sleeping”. The latter is especially confusing for people who read the ~ symbol to mean the logical ‘not’, thus the message is read “not sleeping”. It’s not really annoying, just seems kinda unnecessary to me. I guess I’m old fashioned like that.

OK, that’s it for now, time to really do some homework (maybe).

I saw this on Granger’s LJ first, and did it a while ago, but I figured I’d post some results now.

We should play glow in the dark dodgeball. The balls glow and everyone has to wear a headband that lights up somehow so they don’t run into each other all the time.
Begin collecting supplies for this now.

This advertisement seems a bit… unnecessary to me:

A random list of things that I like:
- Taking a shower when I have a fever
- Putting on shoes after ice skating
- Having just taken a shower and put on fresh clothes after a day at the beach
- Warm sheets
- The outside of a slightly crisped but not burned roasted marshmallow
- The sound of a lock unlocking after several attempts
- Tightly tied, good fitting running shoes
- The smell of Spring
- A dusting of snow
- A kitchen full of unopened food
- Exploring new places
- The word “tantamount” (among others)

OK, that’s it for now, back to studying for a bit.

Updating by popular demand..

I sent out at least a dozen emails tonight, “getting a lot done” that I’ve been meaning to do. This week should be moderately busy but manageable. I finished putting pictures on my site, I added some pictures from Gen and Tyler (its over 120 pictures now).

I have a lot of things that I need to divide my time between in the next month, I hope I can manage it well. It’s too easy to let little things slip, and I don’t want to let that happen.

I finished the Joel on Software book over break, it was good, but not too much more than what’s available online. Reading it in print is much more relaxing, though. If you haven’t read everything in the archive on his site, I’d recommend it (and can lend out the book). I’m still working on Code Complete and just started The Design of Everyday Things today.

I won’t bother to give a lengthy description of my spring break, but Puerto Rico was fun and relaxing. I made sure to take as little responsibility as possible and just went with the flow, which was definitely what I needed. The food and weather were excellent and nothing really went wrong.

The weekend was the KKY Northeast District convention at UCONN. Everything went well, though I had some trouble adjusting from the Puerto Rico schedule (”wake up whenever”). I got some good ideas at the MEP workshop, and it gave me a chance to reflect on a lot of the things our chapter does. I skipped out early before the banquet so that I could go home to visit with my brother and grandmother before I went back to Lehigh. I taught Brian how to make omelets, he did a good job.

That’s all that’s worth writing for now, I’m gonna read and then sleep for a bit.

I usually don’t link to my magicspatula blog from here, but I spent some time tonight outlining a software idea that I had. Maybe worth reading for those who are interested in such things. I have another idea that I need to spend some more time thinking about, but I’ll post it to there once I do.

It’s not worth your time to check my magicspatula blog for updates, they occur sporadically. Just subscribe to the RSS feed. You can subscribe to this with an RSS aggregator. In linux I use Liferea. Windows users might like SharpReader, or just use Bloglines, an online aggregator (works pretty well). You could also use LiveJournal to syndicate an RSS feed, like the way that I get xanga journals to show up on my friends page.

Tonight, after getting back from the beach (around 5), I had a lot of time before dinner (scheduled for 9:30). Since I had all this time, and it had cooled off outside, I decided it would be good to go for a run. My initial idea was to run to the end of ashford ave (as far as I had been before) in both directions, which would have been a few miles, I estimate. I ran East as far as I could, made a lollipop (candyshop) loop and got back to the hotel and proceeded West. Once I got to the end of where we had walked in that direction, I recognized the beach area from when we took the bus to Old San Juan. Just past that was a bridge, so I decided to continue on. Running on the bridge was beautiful (yet dangerous, but whatever). There’s a pedestrian walkeway that I used, and there’s water on either side of it. The city lights reflect off the water in both directions. Once I got into Old San Juan, I ran pretty deep through a park and eventually to some sort of racing track (I’m not sure what was raced there). I reached another shore and decided that I wasn’t really near any of Old San Juan that I had visited before, so I headed back. I stopped a couple of times to rest my legs and do pushups, which totalled 100 by the time I was done. I’m not sure how many miles it was, but I was running at a pretty good speed for around an hour.

Everyone seems to be napping now, so I guess I’ll get in the shower.

I now have 77 pictures from Puerto Rico posted in my gallery. More to come when I get them from other people, plus I’ll probably take some more tonight.