a crank’s progress

The younger generation has much to teach me:

Cut out the crap. Stop multi-tasking. Make a list of all of the things you do or think about in a day, figure out what is actually important to you, and just dump the junk. [I just checked my email again!] Formulate goals rather than allowing them to remain fuzzy in the mind.

Some things I’ve done so far:

• banned myself from purchasing any new books. I’m on info overload and need to stop adding to queue
• unsubscribed from most of my RSS feeds
• redirected my mailing list subscriptions to folders so they don’t hit my inbox
• set aside the idea of learning or mastering any other programming languages (and frameworks) ‘just because’
• no more video game purchases (I do it rarely, but they are just wasting my time)
• no more soft drinks, as I don’t need the distractions that caffeine withdrawals bring
• no more personal software projects until I finish my adventure game
• no coding on the adventure game engine until I actually develop a story and know where I am going!
• give up the idea of exploring vermiculture this year, and just focus on growing a few basic crops in my containers

[From Examining Yama, The First Limb of Yoga - Styled Bits]

I’m doing some of this already, but not with the same sense of purpose. But at the same time, I have been filled with a nagging sensation that things I really want to get done are being shoved aside by busywork to avoid committing to them.

• I rarely buy books, and only if they can’t be had from the library or are designed to be written in or otherwise interacted with
• I have stopped reading RSS feeds and web sites, pretty much. Too much going on there and it compels me to post something that almost no one will read anyway: do my ±50 subscribers need daily updates on nothing or will weekly ones suffice?
• I have used email filter for years, pretty much as soon as I learned about them. I preach it to others who whine about email overload, but it rarely takes.
• Gave up on learning to code ages ago, and I never got into video/computer games

So a general clearing of the decks is underway, and a growing commitment to Do, not talk, not dream or fantasize, but Do Things is taking hold.
With any luck, I’ll have less to talk about and more to show.

is this intentional or the result of letting anyone run their own ad campaign?

we know they can spell refrigeration.

How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?
[From NewsGator Online]

[via]

These Cagllari Daytona pocket bikes are the best bang for your buck. Outperforming much more expensive pocket rockets, the Cagllari Daytona bikes feature durable alloy construction and a torquey high output 2-stroke gas motor.

[From Cagllari Pocket Rocket]

These start at $169. A small motorcycle, 2-stroke at that, for a whole lot less than a pedal-powered bike, or at least what a real enthusiast will pay for a bike. This just seems wrong on so many levels.

A little genealogical research turned up this gem:

FREE-WILL OFFERING. - A few days ago “some person or persons unknown,” thought proper to bestow on a worthy parish Priest, the Rev Father MONAGHAN, a very handsome gift, meant we supposed to be a Christmas box, though a little before the time. This was in the shape of a male child, about ten days old, and well stocked with clothing of a decent description, a new single blanket outside, and its bodyclothes of nice swanskin, with a handsome cap on its head. Thus appareled it was placed in the well of his reverence’s jaunting car, where it was found next morning, in the arms of Morpheus, and apparently happy with its cradle. His reverence not accepting the compliment, sent for the police, who searched for an owner but without success, and the “free will offering” has been consigned to Brookeboro “workhouse. We should add that in the bosom of the child was found a slip of paper with his name “JOSEPH KANE” and alleging that it had been baptized by a Priest of the diocese. The writing was evidently the production of a respectable female, as none other could have used the pen to such perfection. - Armagh Guardian.

[From Co. Cavan; Ireland Newspaper Abstracts]

There’s a story in that.

Given:

• 36 inches annual rainfall
• a collecting roof 8 x 8, raised 2 feet on one side/end for a moderate slope (total area 61.9 sq ft)
• 22.32 gallons of water per foot of rained-on area

That all adds up to 1,383.11981 gallons of water annually. That seems like an awful lot of irrigation-quality water from a pretty small system (a simple shed roof, with or without a shed under it).

Check your area here.

I just made one of these.

Fun, but next time I would use cardstock, not plain paper.

[From Corbis Readymech Cameras]

(No, mine doesn’t look quite like that.)

Look - corn ethanol is basically dumb, and subsidizing it is subsidized dumb. But this isn’t really the problem here:

[From Corn ethanol is the worst thing since sliced Hitler « The Poor Man Institute]

What’s going on? It isn’t that there isn’t enough food. It’s that the ability to fill up a gas tank with gasoline is, in the “wisdom” of the marketplace, the highest value use of the food crop.
[...]
Is the demand for one luxury meat meal really bigger than the demand for ten subsistence grain meals? This is true only if the wealthy person’s desires are valued more than the poor person’s desires. A starving Haitian’s desire for a scrap of bread exceeds your desire for your favorite meal by a considerable amount, but his ability to pay is constrained by your desire for steak.

We’re more concerned with feeding our cars (with corn that could be eaten by people) and housing them (by favoring zoning and urban planning that favors sprawl over density) than in feeding and housing people.

• But maybe it’s possible that the internet is a slightly more sophisticated (or slightly more cognitive) cognitive heat sink?
  didn’t someone say something about something being the opiate of the masses? and haven’t we had references to bread and circuses for nigh on 2000 years?
  (tags: history entertainment society culture values civilization)

trying to work out what has changed in either mysql5 or WordPress. Or are they ganging up on me?

Alrighty, then. something was not right in the mysql upgrade of yesterday. for some reason (safety?) the mysql_upgrade script doesn’t run and restarting mysql without it means the internal mysql data tables are out of sync with what the engine expects. and it always helps to go for speed: make BUILD_OPTIMIZED=yes BUILD_STATIC=yes. seems a bit more sprightly now . . .