Wednesday February 16, 2005 Next Gen x64 Servers
Galaxy, Sun's next generation Opteron-based x64 server initiative, was mentioned in a recent InfoWorld article. I cannot wait until we go to market with these servers. They are going to be hot!
( Feb 16 2005, 01:31:15 PM PST )
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Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris (2004)
* 1/2 (out of 5)
Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day established David Sedaris as a highly successful essayist, both works entrenching themselves on the New York Times bestseller list for years. Sedaris is looking to follow up with this success with his latest offering, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. As with the two previous works, Dress Your Family is a set of comic essays about Sedaris and his dysfunctional family.
Many critics have lauded Dress Your Family as Sedaris' best, earning him consideration as a memoirist of substantial merit. After reading the book, I am unable to share in this opinion. The essays are certainly not uplifting or inspiring. This, in and of itself, is not a serious indictment as inspiration is not Sedaris' intent. Unfortunately, the essays, IMHO, are also neither insightful nor humorous on the whole. I found the essays - with the notable exception of 'Baby Genius' - to be pathetic and depressing. I even found a few - e.g. 'Full House' - disgusting.
Sedaris has a definite gift with prose. His narrative style is extremely smooth and natural - 'comfortable' might be an appropriate characterization. This aside, I found Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim to be largely without merit.
NOTE: If you believe that any of Sedaris' previous works are significantly better than Dress Your Family, please let me know.
( Feb 16 2005, 04:14:16 AM PST )
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Tuesday February 15, 2005 JSourcery
JSourcery is a website providing access to browsable javadocs and source code for an increasing number of open source Java projects. The source code browser provides hyperlinks from all class, object, and method references to where the identifier was declared.
( Feb 15 2005, 04:00:27 AM PST )
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Monday February 14, 2005 Commons Transaction
The Commons Transaction package is a Jakarta Commons package providing "lightweight, standardized, well tested and efficient implementations of utility classes commonly used in transactional Java programming".
The 1.1 release of Commons Transaction provides transactional Maps, multi-level locks, and transactional file access.
Maybe I can finally get rid of those old 'transactional' file utilities I built ages ago. :-)
( Feb 14 2005, 10:23:57 PM PST )
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Sunday February 13, 2005 Words to Live By
1 John 4:8
He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
( Feb 13 2005, 03:36:45 PM PST )
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Saturday February 12, 2005 Visits from Family
A number of members from my immediate family were able to make the trip from southwest Missouri to visit my wife and me and our new son. To our great joy, my mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, and my youngest brother - along with his wife and daughter - were all able to spend some time with us. Tiffany and I are planning on reciprocating and heading to Missouri soon to introduce Caleb to the rest of the clan.
Caleb is very fortunate to have such a loving extended family.
( Feb 12 2005, 04:46:51 AM PST )
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Friday February 11, 2005 An Alchemy of Mind
An Alchemy of Mind : The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain - Diane Ackerman (2004)
** 1/2 (out of 5)
Diance Ackerman has a reputation for bridging art and science by writing about scientific subjects with a poetic spirit. An Alchemy of Mind is her latest offering. The subject of this work is cognitive science and neuroscience. Memory, language, emotions, and the notion of self are all treated with in Alchemy.
Ackerman's work is certainly not a scholarly science text. It can be more accurately characterized as a series of poetic essays containing her somewhat informed thoughts on the subject matter. Put bluntly and concisely, An Alchemy of Mind is long on style and short on science.
Ackerman's prose is often beautiful and occasionally captivating. Her use of imagery and metaphor, while not always effective, is impressive. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book to folks wishing to become more informed about neuroscience. It is simply too scantily researched (a peek at the biliography supports this accusation), too disjoint, and too factually inaccurate in places.
Recommended Instead:
- Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life - Steven Johnson (2004)
( Feb 11 2005, 11:19:32 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Word of the Day
noun - a concomitant sensation; especially : a subjective sensation or image of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated
( Feb 11 2005, 11:10:26 PM PST )
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Thursday February 10, 2005 All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition - Robert Fulghum (2003)
**** (out of 5)
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a compilation of short essays relating the significance of the most simple aspects of life. Fulghum shows in these essays how simple life lessons apply to children and adult alike. This theme is most clearly, and famously, explored in the title essay. In this essay, Fulghum enumerates a series of aphorisms that are often taught to Kindergarten-age children and suggests that these aphorisms are age-neutral.
Of all the essays in the collection, my favorites were "Donny" and "Mother Theresa". "Donny" is the story of a deaf boy who offered to rake the leaves from Fulghum's yard. Despite having previously decided to leave half of his yard unraked as an experiment, Fulghum realizes the relative unimportance of his experiment when weighed against the importance of showing kindness to a child. He acquiesces to Donny's request and provides to him the desired opportunity. "Mother Theresa" is Fulghum's tribute to Mother Theresa and her philosophy to "[do] small things with great love". Fulghum mentions how Mother Theresa's example should serve as a challenge to the rest of us and should be reflected upon in the context of our own lives.
Fulghum's musings at times demonstrate a marked naivete. In my opinion, however, this more often than not tends to add to the book's appeal rather than detract from it. I found many of Fulghum's essays to be touching and inspiring. While I might not subscribe fully to certain aspects of Fulghum's worldview and religious skepticism, I wholeheartedly embrace his simple optimism and his belief in the goodness that can be found in the world and its people. In an age where cynicism seems to be rampant, we need more books like All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
( Feb 10 2005, 02:50:58 PM PST )
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Wednesday February 09, 2005 Ash Wednesday
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Today is a day for penitence and the contemplation of our mortality.
Resources:
Ash Wednesday FAQ
Wikipedia Article
Catholic Observance of Ash Wednesday
( Feb 09 2005, 08:32:23 AM PST )
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Tuesday February 08, 2005 Trivial Tidbits
Pluto was discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona on February 18, 1930. Pluto was named, based on a suggestion by 11 year old Venetia Burney, after the Roman god of the underworld.
Pluto's satellite, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by James W. Christy and Robert S. Harrington. Charon was named after the mythological boatman who ferried souls across the river Styx.
Pluto is smaller than seven of the moons in our solar system: the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton.
( Feb 08 2005, 11:35:28 AM PST )
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Sunday February 06, 2005 Words to Live By
Psalm 37:5
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act.
( Feb 06 2005, 09:51:37 AM PST )
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Saturday February 05, 2005 Sunbird Released
The Mozilla Sunbird team announced yesterday the first official release of Sunbird, a standalone version of the Mozilla Calendar component. The 0.2 release supports Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
( Feb 05 2005, 12:57:32 PM PST )
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Friday February 04, 2005 Word of the Day
adjective - inclined to frequent and often pointless change : inconstant
( Feb 04 2005, 11:13:47 PM PST )
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Things Shot with a .22
Here are some ballistics images (from flickr blog) of a number of items shot with a .22 rifle:
The images were shot, no pun intended, using 400 speed film and a delay timer.
( Feb 04 2005, 08:53:45 AM PST )
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