Xoti

MUDs

2008-11-09T20:00:00Z

I've recently been introduced to Medievia, and I don't know that I'll ever get anything productive done again. So far I'm a level 18 cleric, and just yesterday was in my first formation with a mage named Solen who just happened to notice we were around the same level. Quite interesting. It kind of reminds me of multi-player Nethack, except I don't have to check every little thing I pick up for curses before putting it on. Oh, and it doesn't feel like there's some sadistic guy watching me while I play, just waiting for the worst possible moment to hit the "Kill Player" button.

My only complaint so far is that in a form or other such situation, there's a lot of text flying by. Makes it very difficult to keep up and keep on top of things. Still, it's fun anyway.

Here's my character thusfar:

Anders the Bishop
Level 18 Cleric                   Age: 30 years old
Hit Points: 164(319)     Mana: 427(427)     Movement: 66(490)
Str: 17                           Armor Class: 24
Int: 18
Wis: 18                           Hitroll: 12/0
Dex: 14                           Damroll: 7/0
Con: 18
Sta: 13                           Quest Points: 0
Vitality: 100%                    Fae Magic: 0
Gold Coins: 43,830                Practice Sessions: 5

Hard Drives

2008-09-09T21:47:46Z

What's more frustrating and infuriating than one hard drive dying while you suddenly realize that you don't have recent backups? Having the second hard drive that you reinstalled on also die a little over a week later.

At least this time I've reinstalled on a new drive. Ugh.

Global Bugjam 2008

2008-08-10T03:00:26Z

Global Bugjam 2008 happened, and the Michigan LoCo was no exception. Some photos taken there can be seen at snap-l’s site. It was pretty good, I learned a bit more about bug handling in Launchpad and how to work with them, things like that. I find it amusing though, that instead of solving any bugs, I ended up filing one.

Books

2008-08-06T09:13:22Z

I normally write about more technical things, and still intend to keep to that, but for a moment I thought I'd do something slightly different and turn to something a bit less computer-related, and instead talk about books.

I don't think I've ever met someone that I would describe as "intelligent" that didn't read at least occasionally, and I don't think it's surprising. While I'm not saying there is no such thing as a good television show or a good movie, they just generally pale in comparison to a well written novel in terms of complexity and depth. This is doubly true when it's considered that nearly all television is drivel that insults the viewer's intelligence at least once every ten minutes. Watching TV really does have to be the lowest form of popular entertainment.

Books also are one of my only financial vices. I'm cheap by nature and I hate spending money. It's fortunate, because tuition is expensive and so I can't afford to have expensive taste. Still, I genuinely think that if I made six figures, I'd still agonize over spending $10 on anything non-essential. An exception to this, though, is books. While I still rarely buy new books, instead preferring used books sales and (even better) library sales, books are one of the few things I love to get more of, whether I have the time to read them or not. There's just something satisfying about a shelf full of hardcovers that I couldn't begin to verbalize.

So, I thought I'd do a mandatory blog post about my favorite books, and a little about them. These aren't in any order, or even really my "top ten" or anything of that sort, because that changes constantly. Really, they're just the ones that come to mind immediately while I write this, so if you ask me about this next month, I may very well list an entirely disjointed set. It happens. ]]> So firstly: Sherlock Holmes short stories
My first item and I've already broken the rule by mentioning a genre unto itself nearly, rather than a book. Still, I think this qualifies, and I'm writing this, so I'll give myself permission to use it. I couldn't pick just one, I have yet to read one I didn't enjoy every last word of.

When I was young and teachers and people would ask who my role model was or who I looked up to, I never had an answer. I didn't consciously have anyone I considered a role model, or that I wanted to be like. I always said that a person ought to simply decide what was good to be and work towards internalizing those traits, and decide what was bad, and work towards conquering them. I don't think a person ought to entirely look up to anyone, because we're all less than perfect, and instead should keep more abstract goals in mind.

However, if I had to name a name for a role model for myself, or someone who I wish I was more like, it's got to be Sherlock Holmes, and for the very same reasons that make the stories about him so interesting and enthralling. I wish I could say I liked him because I was like him, but I think it's more that I'm a little bit like him, but even more he's a lot like what I'd like to be. He is first and foremost a logician, a master of rational deduction and crystal clear thought. No detail escapes him, and every detail that could lead to a conclusion is carefully and scientifically considered. He doesn't like to waste time with trivial things, and in fact is bored all of the time, always seeking out a mystery to entertain his mind.

Sherlock Holmes is, in many ways, what I like to think I'm developing towards. Like all good archetypes, it's probably unreachable and I'll never be exactly like him (I have yet to even touch a violin, for example) but I love to think that I have some similar traits and that they're not yet nearly at their peak. I love to dream that my own abilities at logically coming to conclusions based on the pure facts and reason are but still growing. I love to think that maybe I'm sort of a lesser Holmes, not seeking out mysteries and giving Scotland Yard a run for its money, but on a less public level, using the same basic logical processes to decide things for myself, and for analyzing the world around me. I can't help but love any literary character that makes me sit back and say "I wish I were exactly like him". Except for the cocaine use, anyway.

2001: A Space Odyssey
This book is the very definition of good science fiction. It is not about ray guns and space aliens, it is about people. Technology is not the story, it's the setting. It's not a western set in the future, it's literature. This is the book that made me want to read anything and everything that Arthur C. Clarke ever wrote, even if it was just a multiple choice quiz he had in grade school.

It is, quite literally, the story of our entire history as a species, and our entire future. More specifically, a fictional account of our beginnings, and a very realistic and interesting interpretation of humankind's relationship with our tools, our technology. It's the story of technology's affect on us as a species, from the time the first caveman-like creature found that he could use a bone as a club, to the time in the future when we possibly "out grow" our tools, and become something else entirely.

For those that have seen the movie - there are some things here that can't be entirely conveyed in a film. I'd really recommend reading the story as well, especially if not everything made sense. Like that acid trip of an ending, for instance.

1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451
These three really ought to be read as a group, because they all are essentially variations on a theme - government totalitarianism, control of populations, and what it means to be free. I expect most people that have done much reading at all have read 1984, as I believe it's required reading at many high schools (it wasn't at mine, though), but if you haven't, you should. The more time goes by, the more frightening the book is.

Brave New World is another variation on the aforementioned themes, focusing more on even more drastic class stratification than in 1984, having the fetuses of each person deliberately stunted or enhanced according to the caste they'll be in. A touch of genetic engineering, a bit of subliminal brainwashing, and constant social re-enforcement all combine to produce a laboring caste that wouldn't dream of doing anything else, an intellectual class that wouldn't dare consider anything else, and so on. And for when that doesn't work, well, "a gramme is better than a damn".

Fahrenheit 451 is more focused on the repression of ideas and speech. Guy Montag is a fireman, in a world where firemen set fires, rather than put them out. Simply put, they burn the writings of all dissenting ideas. Where 1984 takes a more varied approach, Fahrenheit nearly exclusively addresses the issues of free speech, and the freedom of expression.

Ishmael
I think the thing I liked most about Ishmael was the way that whether or not I agreed with the author (Daniel Quinn), it made me question basic assumptions about culture and society that may never have come to mind to question in the first place, and that alone makes it worth reading. It's an interesting look at our global culture, and is up there with 1984 and other books that just are important to have read at some point.

Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy single-handedly made me want to read every major Russian novel of the late 19th century with this book. I think it embodies a lot of what I think any great work of fiction should encompass - multiple interesting characters with complex personalities for one. Multiple parallel story lines that go apart and interact at key points, keeping things together and coherent, yet providing for a plot that isn't flat and uninteresting. It gave me a character that I immediately could identify with, and sort of cheer for when he succeeded, and emphasize with when he failed. Most importantly with characters, it provided situations that weren't clear cut at all, and gave the reader an opportunity to dissect the situation, rather than just shoving an obvious "good guy" and "bad guy" in front of you.

Twelve Virtues of Rationality

2008-05-04T19:53:50Z

Something that happened at Penguicon that I hadn't mentioned before was my coming on a small paper pamphlet titled "Twelve Virtues of Rationality". I skimmed over it briefly, then tossed it into my bag for further reading in its entirety later. Then, as I often do, I entirely forgot about it until emptying out my bag later on that week.

I've actually read it now, though, and it's a very nice little treatise on twelve main points of rational thought, written by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, and posted on his website (linked above, if you didn't already figure that out). I'd recommend reading over it to anyone, and while it's not earth-shattering (any reasonably rational mind should be saying to themselves "well yeah, that makes sense" while reading it), it's a nice and concise bit of writing on the topic. Sometimes even for material you know, a well-organized and succinct outline of main points makes it easier to fully digest and remember in day to day life.

Also, if you're not a fairly rational person at least... please stop being a burden to the rest of society, and read it twice.

He's kind enough to release it under a creative commons license (attribution, no derivatives), although the fact that he uses a traditional copyright symbol on the same page in reference to the same work is ambiguous. In any case, I thought I'd take advantage of his generosity and post it here as well, hoping to have a few more people read it. Enjoy, and spread it yourself as well.

Thank you, to whomever printed it and left it on tables at Penguicon, you at least got it to one interested party, and I'm sure others.

Penguicon Happened

2008-04-23T22:49:59Z

Penguicon was this past weekend, and lived up to my expectations, which was itself expected. I certainly wasn't the only one enthusiastic about it, because this year, with over 1,000 attendees, we clearly have outgrown the hotel. It's been a nice hotel and everything, but it's just not quite big enough for such a large group. Next year will be in Romulus, so that problem should be alleviated, though.

I managed to get Adam from WSULUG to come along for most of it, and Eric (also from WSULUG) made it out for Saturday and Sunday. Friday night Chris came out as well. Other than that, I mostly tended to hang around the Ubuntu Michigan LoCo Team, most of whom I had talked to countless times in IRC, but had never met in person. I also met a girl there, with whom (as she pointed out) I may have the greatest possible "how we met" story - we met while trying to devise a way to create a velociraptor from assorted garbage and tape. It's a long story, but it has to do with the author of xkcd being there. Readers of it can guess at the intention.

Other highlights of the weekend include hot sauce tasting with ESR (I love spicy food, and the guy has great taste in hot sauce, I learned), and the Giant Singing Tesla Coils. Hell, the tesla coil concerts (there were two, at least) were worth the price of admission alone. Even the hotel employees would sneak out to see them when they could.

I'm not sure if it was the additional people this year or not, but Saturday night seemed even more energetic and bigger than last year. I often describe Penguicon to those who haven't been there as "a 72 hour-ish long party, reverting to serious stuff when the sun comes out", and this year exemplified that. I didn't stick around all night, but based on some of the stories I'm hearing, I think next year I will.

So for those that didn't come - you missed out. A lot. From what I'm hearing, 2009 will be even bigger and even better. There's no reason for you not to go.

Penguicon Is Coming

2008-03-30T02:18:13Z

Penguicon is coming, and I am excited. Last year I finally went, and it was just incredible.

If you're either in the Detroit area or willing to travel there for the weekend, and have an interest in open source or science fiction (or better, both), you really ought to think about coming.

I Hate Product Placement

2008-02-27T05:26:22Z

Every now and then, I'll watch a movie, read a book, or suffer through a television show that I normally would never bother to, mainly in the interest of staying somewhat in touch with popular culture, and making sure I can get the inside jokes now and then. Also, I just like to test the waters outside of my normal harbors periodically, so to speak. Sometimes, I'm very pleasantly surprised and find that what I thought would just be more lowest-common-denominator crap is actually quite good (V For Vendetta, for example).

Other times, no. Other times my original suspicions that the movie or show in question is utter crap are just confirmed, and the time spent on it mostly wasted.

Transformers is a perfect example, and to illustrate, I'd like to assume you haven't seen it for a moment, and reenact it for you.
]]> Transformers, pretty much in its entirety. I just saved you 143 minutes. You can thank me later.

It's worth noting, though, that I still think it's a good idea. Every now and then, people ought to test the borders of their artistic tastes, and stop themselves from barricading themselves into a specific niche. I've found some interesting books and movies that way, and even a television show now and then. Scott made me watch The Sopranos years ago, and forced me to realize that not all television is inherently dimwitted. Without that, I'd have missed out on the artistic genius of Carnivàle, Deadwood, and Rome. Eliza sent me a copy of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, and introduced me to an author I had never heard of, and probably wouldn't have otherwise bothered me with.

So if you've never done so, listen to a death metal album. Read a book in a genre you never really cared for before, or by an author you never cared for. Even if you still don't like it, it's not wasted time - borders can't expand if you don't push on them now and then.

Just don't bother watching Transformers.

Programming Ecosystems

2008-01-21T23:53:03Z

It might help here to first give a bit of background. While I am still (for a little longer) a university student, I've also done web development for the past four years in the travel industry, mostly working on internal applications for my employer. We used Perl, MySQL, and the other usual suspects (XHTML, CSS, a bit of Javascript here and there).

So recently when I was given a semester-long group assignment in a class, I took the opportunity to use it as a means to get reacquainted with PHP. As I mentioned, we've always used Perl at work, mainly because that's what the people that were there before me (and above me while they were there) used, and it just doesn't make sense to rewrite potentially tens of thousands of lines of code just because.

Anyway, as many will already know, PHP is pretty much the "cool thing" for web development nowadays, and while I have used it before, it was years ago when PHP5 was still brand new. I figured this would be a good way to get back into a little, if for no other reason than so that I could legitimately put it on my resume again.

When I decided all of this though, I noticed a difference in the methods that my classmates and I went about learning or refreshing our knowledge of the language. Part of it came from me having done it before, and being fairly knowledgeable of web programming in general already, but I think it's more than that, and I think it's worth taking note of and possibly learning from.

My classmates all immediately went looking for books. Things like PHP For Dummies and other "entry level" books designed for the aspiring programmer starting from scratch. This isn't a bad idea I suppose, but I suspect that most people would stop there, or simply continue with more advanced books, and the occasional blog reading. This isn't enough.
]]> screen scraping or data mining, and even then, there's dozens of books out there).

The important part they're missing is that of tapping into a sort of ecosystem of that language or field. There's more to web development and design than just learning your basic HTML, CSS, Javascript, and a server-side language of choice, and having a go at it. There's a thriving community that constantly is publishing innovative new techniques, news, and invaluable little tidbits of information that are essential to doing what you do properly.

It's not just bug reports and release announcements that I'm talking about. I'm talking about things like innovative methods of protecting posted email address from spam. This isn't the most exciting of examples, perhaps, but it's a valid issue, and worth reading up on, because it comes up all the time. You wouldn't see that sort of thing in a book or tutorial, you have to keep an eye on your blogs and other "ecosystem" sources such as periodicals.

Blogs are nice, but they're just not always exactly the cream of the informative crop. Sometimes you need something in between the in depth detail of a well-written book and the immediacy and breadth of topics of a blog. Filling this gap are magazines and other periodicals, and in this field, many are published online. Comparing them to blogs is a little like comparing student essays to academic journals, although perhaps to a slightly lesser degree. Good ones have articles written by highly qualified and talented individuals in their fields and areas of interest, and will still have a decently wide array of topics, while still staying in the specific area of interest to their readership.

I can sit and talk about this for pages and pages, but instead, let me just give examples, and you can go agree or disagree with me for yourself. Below are some of the blogs and periodicals that I keep up on (I can't read 100% of all of these, but more or less), and hence are mostly in the area of web development and design. I'm not going to list the same things that are in the area of Linux, because that can fill a whole other blog entry, and the reasons are really the same, only possibly even more important because of the higher level of development and cohesion in the Linux community.

I'm also not listing every last one, because for one thing, I don't know them all. I only have a little free time to keep up on the ones that I happen to know about now. Secondly, because part of the process is just finding out what's out there and finding ones specific to what you find interesting, and that match your level of knowledge. I haven't found many that are terribly advanced and you need a huge amount of background knowledge for, but there are ones out there geared more to the entry-level potential developer (much as Tux Magazine was geared to the new Linux user).

So, for web design (i.e. not generally programming, but the client-side of things, and the artistic element of making a web interface):

A List Apart - Excellent articles, and they have extra points with me because not only do they preach it, they practice it. Their site is simply a pleasure to look at, visually, and even have a look at the HTML source - clean CSS layout, and very good and semantic all around.
Refresh Detroit - I can't say I know much about these folks, but I've been sort of keeping an eye on them a little, and I'll admit partly just because they're local to me. I've written before on the area of the importance of web standards, and they say that's a prime element of their purpose, so they're worth watching.
Particle Tree - I actually only found them today while looking up an old online periodical that they did called Treehouse Magazine. I've only seen the first issue (because they gave it away for free, and I'm cheap) so far, and years ago when it first came out, but I remember being impressed. I'll probably consider ordering their back issues, and watch their blog from now on. I'd encourage others to do so as well.

More on the programming side, as I said, I'm biased towards Perl still, and still getting into the PHP side, but here's the ones that have come up for me anyway. Even if you don't use Perl much, maybe it'll help give an idea and examples of what's out there:

Perl Monks - A great (if not slightly ugly) Perl community site, and a must-have for anyone that uses Perl often. Ask the Perl Monks a question, give an example of clever code you wrote, or even read and submit poetry entirely written in valid, runnable Perl. The "Cool Uses For Perl" section is always fun to read. It's great to see what some skilled people can do with Perl that you might never think of even trying. If you do Perl, you need to be frequenting this site. Daily.
Perl.com - Run by O'Reilly, who also publish some awesome books on every conceivable technical topic, this site has a pretty decent flow of articles on Perl programming related topics and general Perl news.
MySQLForge - I cheat here a little, this is (obviously) for the MySQL database, but with web development, you rarely get away without some kind of database, so I'll toss it in here, too. Code snippets and projects galore. It's a fun thing to browse through.

So there's a start for you. Go forth and find more, and by all means, post your own that I didn't cover in the comments.

Magnatune

2008-01-12T21:54:41Z

Something about me that's probably a bit of a rarity compared to most of my peers on the Internet is that I don't pirate music. I'm not at all saying I'm on the RIAA's side or anything like that, I just think that one of the best things about the Internet and its effect on culture is the decentralization of content creation and distribution, including music. There's plenty out there to listen to legitimately without resorting to questionable legalities and rampant lawsuits, even if you do think you're justified in pirating music.

I'm not an expert on creative commons or other similarly licensed music out there, but one site I've found in particular to be great, both in selection and quality, is Magnatune. Amarok users will probably already know of this one since the program has a integrated interface to it, but for the rest of you, maybe this will be new. The rest of you should also be abandoning MS Media Player or whatever other drivel you're using, and flocking to Amarok in droves, but that's a whole other blog entry for another day.

Magnatune licenses their music with a Creative Commons license, which I've mentioned in previous posts. You can listen to everything they offer, in its entirety, though a flash player in your browser, or streamed from their site. When you purchase an album (and it's much cheaper than the crap in your local store), you can download it in multiple formats, including Ogg Vorbis, which made me happy, or even the raw and uncompressed .wav files. No DRM, and if you so choose, not even compressed. Also when you purchase an album, they not only allow, but encourage you to share it with three other people. In short, as they say themselves, they're not evil.

As for the music itself, I've found that it's more appealing in general if you're a fan of classical music. Something like 50% of their offerings are in that general area, but not all, of course. Musical taste varies widely, so it's best that you just browse their site yourself, but some favorites (so far) of mine include Sundowner, Utopia Banished, and Monks and Choirs of Kiev Pechersk Lavra. That's just a start though, since there's hundreds of albums, and I haven't even come close to listening to half of them.

Open Standards And Social Networks

2007-12-20T21:53:37Z

I turned in a paper today (actually a 'Literature Review') for a class about the topics you see here in the title. There were several other interesting topics to choose from, but I came up with this one myself for three main reasons. First, Open Standards are something I've supported anyway. It comes with the territory of being an enthusiastic Linux user. Secondly, despite my introverted nature and hermit-like habits, I actually find social networks and their workings, as well as applications of their use to be very interesting. Thirdly, because I really do believe that the application computing to social networks is going to revolutionize culture as we know it, and already has to some degree. This may very well be the biggest contribution the field of computing has on not just society, but the nature of our culture and civilization itself. Sounds grandiose, but just wait. We're in the initial stages, it's still gestating.

So, while this wasn't a terribly long and in depth paper, nor a technically detailed one, nor the definitive introduction to the topic (after all, I write it in all of maybe six hours, grand total), I did find some very interesting things along the way. The assignment asked that we review three journal articles, but I ended up doing five, and in the course of finding the five I wanted to use, I ended up at least skimming over two dozen articles from journals and conference proceedings from the ACM and the IEEE. I didn't consider myself an expert when I started (after all, that's why I chose it - to learn, not just regurgitate what I already know), nor am I one now, but I do think I'm better informed on the topic now, so I thought I'd share some of the interesting implementations, applications, and information on social networks that I found using open standards. ]]> Facebook, Orkut, or (ugh) MySpace. What I mean is a much more abstract and conceptual idea. Essentially, all a social network is, is a collection of nodes (people) connected by relationships. A classroom is a social network - each person is a node, connected by the relationship "classmate", and all the "student nodes" are connected to the "professor node" by the relationship "student", and so on. Your immediate family is a social network, each person connected to the other by relationships such as "sister" and "mother" or "uncle" and so on. Facebook and it's kin are Social Networking Sites. They're just an implementation of software that works on existing (and probably noticeably extends) social networks. It's a fine line, but I hope I've made it a clear distinction.

So if I'm not talking about Facebook, what am I talking about? Well, let's start with something fairly basic: Friend-of-a-Friend. It's a file format that's a derivative of RDF, so it's very nicely structured, and describes relationships between people. Think of it as a machine-readable "profile page" from a social networking site, sort of, but instead of a friends list, you have entries that have URLs of your friends' FOAF pages.

Once we have this framework for describing a social network in a machine-readable way, we can start doing fun things with it. Things like movie recommendations (pdf), or calculating trust between users as a means to filter email (pdf). You can use it to describe a social network from an IRC channel. The list goes on, but you get the idea. It's worth mentioning here that none of this data would be as readily available if it wasn't a open format, easily accessed and well documented.

There is more to it, but by now you ought to have the gist of if, and a quick search on Google Scholar (as I've linked above) shows that research is ongoing in this area, so I'll let the papers and the researchers speak for themselves.

TED

2007-12-14T01:16:50Z

I had heard about TED some time ago, but never really investigated much. I spend an unhealthy amount of my time in front of a computer screen, and so countless possibly interesting things come across without my wholehearted investigation, for varying reasons. Sometimes I'm in the middle of more important things, or maybe it just doesn't look interesting at the time. I'm not sure which explanation to blame for my missing TED, but for whatever reason, I just didn't look into it.

Then, a month or two ago, a politically-aware friend sent me a link to a talk on TED called "Scenes From The War Tapes", given by a filmmaker named Deborah Scranton who gave cameras to American soldiers in Iraq. In the roughly eighteen minute long presentation, Scranton shows you a bit of what the result looks like, as well as some of the reactions of people who have seen it, including soldiers themselves. I'll give you a bit of a warning - near the end, the soldier's reaction she talks about is gut-wrenching. This talk alone got me interested, and TED was back on the back burner of my mind, to look at in more detail later.

Skip forward to a couple of weeks ago. I'm idling in the WSULUG IRC channel, and someone (I believe it was Jason, but I'm not positive) tosses up a link from TED again. This time it's Larry Lessig, and he's talking about "How creativity is being strangled by the law", and it's nothing short of brilliant. I'm a fan of Creative Commons, and if you'll notice, I use a license of theirs for this blog and even all the photos on my Flickr site are CC licensed. Suffice it to say, I have a passing interest in the topic, even if I'm not exactly an expert. In any case, his talk was an excellent introduction to not Creative Commons, but the reasons why something like Creative Commons exists.

So then, three related incidents - what's my point? My point is simply that if you have more intelligence than a turnip, you ought to browse through their site, and start watching some of these people speak. TED has talks by leading minds in their fields, and the fields covered span dozens of topics. They're also fairly accessible, so you don't need a Ph.D. in physics to watch Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann talk about "Beauty and truth in physics", for example.

I'll even meet you halfway, and get you started. I have yet to look though all of the talks available because it's finals week and there's over 150 of them, but here's the ones I've seen so far (besides the ones linked above) that were of interest to me, or that are on my personal "to watch" list. They're in no particular order.

Steven Pinker, "A Brief History Of Violence".
Richard Dawkins, "An Atheist's Call To Arms"
Richard Baraniuk, "Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning"
Richard Dawkins, "The universe is queerer than we can suppose"

There you go. Four of them, plus the three linked before the list. Get a beer, snack on some broccoli, and watch them. Then find more, because this is just the tip of the TED iceberg.

Intial Entry

2007-12-12T05:55:50Z

So, after having a few people mention it when I registered the domain, I thought I'd give this blogging poppycock a try. Why? Because, to do otherwise would be to do something useful, and I love to waste time.

Being that final exams are currently ongoing, I probably won't bother much with this for a week or two, so until then, you can just read this everyday. I know you're excited enough to. Just print this up, post it to your front door, and read it every time you leave.