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Community


Actively Reading
Introducing Ethics | David Robinson, et al
Socrates Cafe : A Fresh Taste of Philosophy | Christopher Phillips
On-deck
Agile Software Development | Alistair Cockburn
The Hacker Ethic | Pekka Himanen, et al
Counter Hack | Ed Skoudis
Practical Unix and Internet Security | Spafford, Garfinkel
Read (since 9.16.99)
The Career Programmer | Christopher Duncan
A Beautiful Mind | Sylvia Nasar
Me Talk Pretty One Day | David Sedaris
Euclid's Window | Leonard Mlodinow
Ava's Man | Rick Bragg
Affluenza | John DeGraaf, et al
sed & awk | Dougherty, Robbins
The Unix-hater's Handbook | Simson Garfinkel, et al
XML/RPC | Simon St. Laurent, et al
Core J2EE Patterns | John Krupi, et al
eXtreme Programming Explored | Wake
Software Craftsmanship | McBreen
XML-RPC | St. Laurent, et al
Mastering Regular Expressions | Friedl
Programming Ruby | Thomas, Hunt
Slack | DeMarco
Advanced JavaServer Pages | David Geary
Effective Java | Jeremy Bloch
Learning the vi Editor | Lamb, Robbins
The Secret House | David Bodanis
Unix Tricks and Tips | Kirk Waingrow
Learning the Korn Shell | Bill Rosenblatt
Geeks | John Katz
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams
The Cathedral and the Bazaar | Eric S. Raymond
Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert Heinlein
Several Books on Solaris and Unix Admin
It's Not About the Bike | Lance Armstrong
The Humane Interface | Jef Raskin
The Pragmatic Programmer | Andrew Hunt
The Water-method Man | John Irving
The Nudist on the Late Shift | Po Bronson
Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy | Donald Palmer
Principles of Transaction Processing | Philip Bernstein
In the Beginning Was the Command Line | Neal Stephenson
The Tomb | HP Lovecraft
The Lurking Fear | HP Lovecraft
Secrets, Lies, and Democracy | Chomsky/Barsamian
Hannibal | Thomas Harris
eXtreme Programming eXplained | Kent Beck
Philosophy for Dummies | Tom Morris
Sophie's World | Jostein Gaarder
Clear Thinking | Hy Ruchlis
Chomsky for Beginners | David Cogswell
Philosophy, the Basics | Nigel Warburton
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! | Richard Feynman
The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien
Listening
Remain in Light | Talking Heads
Good Dog, Happy Man | Bill Frisell
Revival | Gillian Welch

 

 
Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Ahhhhhh. The site (well, blog page) redesign is finally done. I hacked half the day yesterday to get my "new" layout set up, and in the evening, this is what I had:

I was fairly happy, except for the vauguely corporate look. It is a personal site, after all. So at around 10:00 I took one of my quickie self-portraits, hacked around on the image till I liked it, added the logo-ish stuff to make a headline image, and re-hacked my stylesheet to change the color scheme, and voila, you're looking at my self-approved new design. A testament to stylesheets.

muttered around 9:00 AM

Sunday, September 23, 2001

So, no updates in quite some time. My last update was the day before the WTC and Pentagon attacks. I didn't write anything because -- well, what do you say? Horrible.

Anyway, I basically chilled out last week. It was my first week of being "between engagements". I rode my bike quite a bit (but see below), and fooled around with my Sun boxes, playing with the soon-to-be-big language "Ruby".

I keep meaning to automate my site somewhat. I mean, I already use Blogger, which is great. But I'd like to have more control, and since I'll be hosting my site out of my house before too long, I can basically do whatever I want. The problem is: I have too many options. I could use Ruby, Java/JSP/Servlets(what I know best), Zope, Perl, etc. So, I'm basically in "analysis paralysis". I did get Ruby connected up to MySQL, and got a couple of (very simple) CGI things up and running under Ruby. After using servlets for so long, I'd forgotten how clunky CGI is. Of course, Ruby makes Java look pretty clunky, in turn.

My cycling mileage has suffered this month due to a minor wrist injury I got on Labor Day weekend. I injured it playing soccer; I stopped a shot on goal, but my hand/wrist got driven into my knee. Hurt like hell. Anyway, I basically took a full week off from cycling, to give the wrist some recovery time, then went back to cycling. However, I also took three weeks off from weight training (yesterday was my return to lifting). I rode today with LJ and Daryl around Chatfield Reservoir. Good ride, but early and chilly (around 50 degrees).

Perhaps I'll spend some time this week freshening this site's design. I mean, all I really have to do is come up with a new graphic, change my Blogger template(s) and change the colors and fonts in my stylesheet to give it a fresh look. Yeah, that's all it takes. No problem!

muttered around 6:13 PM

Monday, September 10, 2001

Searching for Bobby Fischer? Maybe you'll find him on the Internet Chess Club. I used to play there a lot, but I'm certain I never played him. I was afraid to take on anyone over a 1500 rating.

muttered around 11:08 AM

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