Garden Of Blog

…to say something insightfully worthwhile on this blog in 2005, but I’m thinking I might go try and beat the next level of Simpsons Hit & Run.

Thanks for dinner last night, Branden. It was good seeing you, Dave, Brian and Don.

Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer, died not once, but twice. The first time was in 1990, when he had a heart attack while playing polo that left him clinically dead for eight minutes.

“The good news is there’s no devil. The bad news is there’s no heaven. There’s nothing,” Packer said after the incident.

And there you have it, the words of a billionaire. Not only that, but you can’t take it with you. Mr. Packer died for the second, and last time, on Christmas.

Happy New Year.

This really has been the best Christmas ever. Why? It’s the first one I’ve spent with two of my own children.

Can’t beat it!

iPodder has officially changed its name to “Juice”, which I think is rather spiffy. Two letters shorter is good, and distancing from the iPod will limit confusion about needing an iPod to use the app (you don’t).

You can now download Juice here. Highly recommended. Get on board with the future of radio!

If you haven’t noticed, my new obsession is including images with my posts. You’d think the concept first occured to me just a few days ago.

Anyhow, Abby and I are going to see Chronicles of Narnia this afternoon, and pick up a nebulizer for Marco.

I just finished this Tom Robbins book. It’s been too long since I read Even Cowgirls Get The Blues to compare them meaningfully, but I recall liking Cowgirls just a little more. This one confused me with the long “Tanuki” section leading it off. Still, I’d probably give Robbins one more chance.

…has been the playing of Simpsons Hit and Run 2 on the PS2. Lots of fun. Grand Theft Auto meets the Simpsons.

We won’t be getting one of the next generation consoles though. This is a generation we can afford to skip. Until the kids start clamouring for the latest, that is.

I love this picture of Abby in front of the Mindfest banner Jamie made.

This shit has to be seen to be believed. And even then, you might not believe it.

Click on “products” [shiver].

Also, one of the funniest FARK headlines ever:

Youth ministries make Jesus “more edgy” to attract teens. Jesus v2.0 smokes herb, has an iPod, hates his dad and answers to “J-Loc”

It links to this troubling article.

I laughed, I cried.

Today I got the Gouranga spam and was mysteriously compelled to Google “Gouranga.” What struck me about the spam, I realize now, was that nothing was being pitched or sold. It was merely, as is noted on Wikipedia:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ….
That which brings the highest happiness!!

Although this particular piece of spam was interesting among the 500+ I seem to be getting each day, the spammer sounds most annoying.

Gouranga!

“It’s easy,” Jeremy said. But then, Jeremy makes everything look easy. Damn him.

The task at hand is installing a Subversion server. My last post was about CMS, and this one is about SCM. What a boring piece of shit I am.

Source Code Management (SCM) is widely known to be an essential part of any IT shop worth its salt, as Jeremy showed me over at Somix Technologies last year. Oh, I had been in contact with SCM software before, helping to administer the still opaque Continuus software that I think turned into Synergy software before Liberty Mutual and I, uh, lost our synergy. But I first became a user of SCM software when Jeremy forced me into Subversion at Somix. I loved it. I was not only preserving the changes in my code over time, but more importantly, becoming conscious of them.

Consciousness is so important when trying to solve complex problems. I have only become better at coding through a series of small enlightenments. No amount of “hard work” counts for squat. You are only raised higher by luck, but when luck shows you “the way” you need to stay that path.

That’s how I feel about SCM, I need to use it as a matter of principal, to log and articulate every “trivial” change in my code base. Code changes slowly over time, usually in a series of “bursts” (which seems the best word to describe the human work habit). It’s fun and interesting to watch and guide this code evolution over time, even if your progress is slow. Slow and steady win the race, which is why I love whomever named Tortoise (a Windows Subversion client). That person had obviously tuned into a similar mindset.

Refocusing the Tortoise and Hare metaphor on politics, the subversion (small “s”) of entrenched cultural habits takes places slowly over time as well. As with code evolution, there is a perpetual “out with the old, in with the new” that tends to undermine the encumbant customs, which despite recent stirrings, suggests a continuation of the secularization of Western society. That why I think politics is due for a hard swing to the Left in the next ten or twenty years, during which we’re bound to screw up and learn some new lessons.

I forget what we were talking about?

Focus on this.