duncanbeevers

Biomedics ethics are pushed further than ever with artifically replicated vaccine-supplies doled out by metrics all but the very very rich will accuse of classism and racism.

The cell phone will integrate more and more functions, (voice, photo, video, text, interactive) and still remain estranging and hard for my parents to understand.

And Duncan? He will become more concerned with the environment, and learn a little bit about plants.

What does your future look like?

My laptop fell off the bed (the only place I get consistent wireless access) and now Trope's guts make the sound "click click click" and deliver the message "Please insert Bootable Media" as though I could boot from more than one medium at a time.

Surprisingly, I'm feeling quite non-chalant about the whole thing. I got sick of going through all this work just to post FTP links to some tracks I'm listening to (though those will still work) and went ahead and created a ShoutCast station. Right now it's playing Dampen, which sounds (unsurprisingly?) like a toned-down (is that possible?) version of Notwist (note: unsurprisingly) One With the Freaks.

Who loves parentheses? Duncan does.

On a more positive note, I pooped out my first Ruby program to see what the language is like. What a lot less code than a similar C++ templated binary tree!

class BinaryTree
  # Instance variables
  @children
  @value
  @left
  @right

  attr_reader :value, :children

  def initialize()
    @children = 0
    @left     = nil
    @right    = nil
    @value    = nil
  end

  # Override to_s function for nice display
  # This binary tree displays as follows
  # If there is a left tree, the left tree is displayed wrapped in L()
  # The value of the current tree (head node) is displayed
  # If there is a right tree, the right tree is displayed wrapped in R()
  def to_s
    out = ""
    out += "L(#{@left.to_s}) "  unless @left == nil
    out += "#{@value}"
    out += " R(#{@right.to_s})" unless @right == nil
    return out
  end

  def insert(value)
    if @value == nil
      # If this is a tree with no current value, it simply stores
      # the value it has been passed.
      @value = value
    else
      # Otherwise, the tree determines which direction the new value should go.
      # If there is no tree to receive the value, one is created first.
      @children += 1
      if value <= @value
        @left = BinaryTree.new if @left == nil
        @left.insert(value)
      else
        @right = BinaryTree.new if @right == nil
        @right.insert(value)
      end
    end
  end
end

Of particular note, I love the unless operator. Ruby's loose typing and lax syntax are weird, but the language itself has some sweet constructs. (My real code is indented).

We are the knights who say nil!

Edit: Hey! I just learned about the <pre> tag! Whitespace lives!

This is a minor complaint, but hey, I'm on a roll.

In doing my work, I often cut and paste code, images, URLs, etc... Why is it that in many so-called 'productivity' applications, there is a whole toolbar dedicated to these elementary functions?

Do any of you use these buttons?

Current Music: Kissogram - Girl In My Shower

The text-messaging craze is just beginning. These handy links are fun and fun!

Web Interfaces
Cingular Web-Interface
Cingular, formerly AT&T Wireless
Verizon Wireless
T-Mobile
Sprint

Script Interfaces (Have not tested which of these accept GET vs POST)
Modify these fields in the following URLs to customize your payload.
[_FROM_, _TO_, _SUBJECT_, _MESSAGE_, _CALLBACKNUMBER_, _YOUREMAIL_]

Cingular
Cingular, formerly AT&T Wireless
Verizon Wireless
T-Mobile
Sprint

A few more things that bug me. Software developers, take heed.

• Blocking operations
Very much like modal dialogs, blocking operations piss me off and waste my time. If I decide to install or uninstall a piece of software, there are a few questions I may need to answer in order to complete the operation. Either (a) Get those questions out of the way at the very get-go, or (b) Ask those questsion when they become relevant, but continue doing the rest of the installation that is not dependent on the answers to these questions.
Here's a classic example: Windows, just becase I haven't told you what timezone I'm in doesn't mean you can't finish the rest of the system install. Yes, I know many softs have an unsupervised install mode, but I think much of the software-using community would benefit from the ability to make a sandwich during a long install without worrying the computer is going to waste any more of their time than is absolutely necessary.
• Skinned user-interfaces
Not intrinsically bad, but if you're gonna make a skinned app, at least do the following things:
• Provide comparable functionality to native system control when equivalents exist
• Provide an option NOT to skin if I choose.
• Respect my system-wide decisions on special effects, such as drop-shadows, sliding menus, etc...
• Do NOT provide a skin that just looks like the default system, not everyone uses Luna Blue

Current Music: Mr. Oizo - Stunt

Web developer toolbars have been developed for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The Web Developer Extension provides great features for manipulating FORMs, visualizing deprecated elements, validating markup and much much more.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides many useful features as well, including many of the same block-level visualization tools as well as a competent DOM-tree browser.

I highly recommend both tools for anyone who does any reasonable amount of page-design, especially for procedurally-generated pages.

Current Music: Kissogram - Owda Awda (Back Johnny Back)

Okay, a couple of things that have been bothering me for a while, and specifically, bothered me about ten seconds ago.

• Splashscreens
I know you're loading, I clicked on your icon. Don't cover up the other things I'm working on while you do your pre-load, okay...
• Modal Dialogs
Gha! If you're performing an operation that's going to take a while, do it in the background. I'd like a little progress bar, but it's not necessary. Why does my software want to interrupt me? Are programmers so afraid of multi-threaded design?

Okay, that's all for now.

Current Music: Turner - Lord Stripper

As my dog ages, he seems to require more and more attention. So here's a tough one, but I felt that as a relationship advances we begin to understand one another's quirks, and though we can never know it all, we reach a level of comfortable maintenance.

No longer tied to a corporate job, Tigard simply isn't working out. I need to move.

Current Music: Lawrence - Falling Down a Dam of Mashed Potatoes

Over at last.fm, I've joined a group for Oink's Pink Palace users.

The group's chart is a veritable who's-who of underground and not-so-underground pop. What a trip, and if you see some names on there you're not familiar with, you'd probably make your ears happy taking a listen.

This web is so self-referential!

While working (at Aztec Willie's - free wifi), I looked at my screen and thought "My, this is kind of complicated." So I took a screenshot.


And I wondered, "What do my friends do on their computers?" So let's see some screenshots! What kind of clicking keeps y'all employed? (or whatever)

I'm alive!

Inexplicably woke up yesterday: irritable, cramped up, sweaty, contrary and apathetic. I feel sick again, or fighting sickness. There’s no room in my heart, today, for other people, but they keep elbowing in there anyway, and it’s a goddamn fire hazard is what it is. Packed all up in there, in my chest, my sinuses, breathing too loud, disturbing my skin. Drew skulls and drugs to work it out. Beats on these tinny speakers, no energy, want to hold still forever. Autumn isn’t supposed to feel like this, bursting at the seams.

T-shirts!
Threadless
Defunker
Squidhunter
fabric8
Karmaloop
Giant Peach
2k
Sugartrash

And custom screen-printing:
Contagious Graphics
Spreadshirt *
Customink
Jak Prints
Mammoth Print Shop
Twisted Toad - Blanks

Good news! The depleted uranium used in US munitions is only 70% as radioactive as natural uranium. Though speculative, there is concern that the increase in Iraqi and Kuwaiti birth defects (warning, highly graphic images) and symptoms affecting Gulf War veterans may be due to the effects of depleted uranium.

Last.FM, previously progeny-of AudioScrobbler links users to one another's musical tastes based on their collected listening history.

Denness Network provides dynamic signatures based on your listening history, which is slick.


Best of all, Last.FM radio allows you to interactively explore music similar to what you've already listened to, or similar to given artists. It's not perfect, but it still kicks ass. If you're into musical exploration, don't miss out on the New mp3.com's music vine, a flash app that lays out the relationships for (popular) bands in a fun and informative graph.

I love The Knife because their music awesome, and they are hot.


Also, here's an interesting video:
Jenny Wilson - Summertime, the Roughest Time

I stood on the shore of Kotatsu beach with my lover, overcome by the seventh fire-by-sunset in as many days when to the left and to the right, dark clouds rolled in, and strong winds spat spray and sand into our eyes. I took the fore, facing the sea to shield my lover from the brunt of the gale, but as the remaining sun was swallowed in the charcoal banks I was overtaken by a powerful wave swelling from the hot water.
The salty wave stung my eyes and carried me up, up, above the clouds, above the rage. In the sky, I floated with stars and saw the beach as a sliver of the vast map. The cloudtops were silver with the moon, sliding over the glassy face of the earth. I stared down through the frames and saw many beaches and many storms. The hot wind from the sea held me aloft, skipping and sleeping across the long night.
But on Kotatsu beach, I did not see my lover, and assumed she had been consumed by the waters. I wept, but did not know how to come back down, and so I floated along a while, into the morning’s fire-by-sunrise, whose long arms seared the clouds and burned away my flight-wind. The sun and I crossed paths, my plunging descent masculine counterpoint to its arc-en-ciel.
As before, I was enveloped in the green brine, warm and deep and full of a secret life hidden from my view through the windows of the clouds. Flotsam from the storm still eddied in the tall flumes, cycling to the ceiling and then back down into ink. I saw theses hot towers and by their passengers I knew but could not see that all were joined below, sharing riders, foods, scents. I kicked toward one, and grabbed hold of an ugly-looking root. Clasping with both arms, I rode the misplaced denizen back to the surface, disembarked, and spent, allowed the water to press me back to shore.
Still no sign of my lover on the beach, but I searched up and down, following the curve of the sand and the sky beyond the line of fog at the distance of my vision. To the mountains at the extremes of Kotatsu beach, and back again, and sometimes I imagined I saw her tiny silhouette, but always ahead, always out of reach.
On the night of the fourteenth fire-as-sunset, I came across an arrangement of shells and carapaces, dutifully laid out on the beach.
“The sea can have you,” motto of the disinterested.

Duncan needs to die. There's no "reasonable doubt" in anybody's mind.
Duncan needs to clean house.
Duncan needs a real home.
Duncan Needs Better Lawyers
I think that all Duncan needs is a good a paint-by-number mural and he'll be all set.
Duncan needs to review this and do some of the dirty work.
Duncan needs to figure out how to win the hearts and minds of Marylanders without attacking the city.
Duncan needs Madelyn's joy to help him become spontaneous and less rigid.
Duncan needs to gain weight before we have him neutered.
Duncan needs to complete the work by conducting a two-hour diagnostic interview, which is designed to obtain an accurate diagnosis of her disorder.