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2013-04-05 - Random Quotes 2

It’s been a while since I did the first one of these and I figured I should do another one. I need something to write about anyways. So here’s how this works, I click random page on Wikiquote until I find an interesting quote then I write about it.

“Logic hasn't wholly dispelled the society of witches and prophets and sorcerers and soothsayers.” Raymond F. Jones

It’s strange how people can argue against logic. You present a well thought out argument to someone and they reject it not because they can disprove it but because they can’t accept the conclusion. It’s a strange world we live in where simple explanations are overshadowed by more complex ones. It’s not that long ago that people thought the sun was pulled across the sky by some kind of chariot.

“There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.” Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis

I like these kinds of quotes because they don’t really tell you to do anything just to stay away from the extremes. Balance is the key to a lot in life and it’s good to keep that in mind. There are going to be people who know more than you and its okay to follow them but don’t follow blindly or else you’ll end up walking into a wall. If you are unsure about something question it and don’t be afraid to refuse. After all, no one knows everything.

“Don't forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away.“ Ingo Molnar

I don’t know enough about the history of Linux to tell if this quote is accurate but even if it’s not I still like it. It speaks to the point that just because something is true in one case does not make it true in all cases. When developing something you need to be mindful of what other people have done before you but that doesn’t necessarily mean copying them. Only implement those things that you feel fit with your vision for your project.

2013-02-23 - Learning Plan

I’ve almost finished my C# textbook, just a few more chapters left, which means I need to find something to do as a final project and something else to learn. For the final project I’m thinking about building a budgeting application to replace the income/expense tracking I currently do with excel. That would give me a chance to build a lot of controls and also work with MS SQL. I should say that this isn’t a final project from the textbook or a class; it's just that when I've finished learning about a topic I like to do a project on my own to cement what I’ve learned and get some experience doing things from scratch.

Now to the other question, what to learn next? I’ve been looking at python and I think it could be interesting. While looking into it I found out it was named after Monty Python which is certainly a point in its favour. The other thing I want to learn is Visual Basic. It is one of the things a lot of jobs seem to be asking for and it’s also something I’ve been wanting to learn for a while since it seems to be fairly different syntax wise to the c inspired languages I’ve worked with so far. I’d like to get a textbook for Visual Basic and python, but that will have to wait until after I get a job.

I’d also like to learn ASP.net as well as Perl or Ruby at some point. Unless I get a job using one of those I’ll probably hold off for a while though. ASP.net seems like an interesting web technology and the others seem to be useful but there are only so many hours in a day. There’s also my Win32 textbook I’m still working on. I’m 375 pages in and still barely a quarter of the way through the book.

2013-02-01 - If looks could kill

I was listening to the radio a while ago and “Games without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel came on. It’s an interesting song but one line in particular caught my attention, “If looks could kill they probably will”. Now I’ve heard the statement “If looks could kill” many times but this got me thinking about what would happen if looks could kill. Now the obvious, and trivial, answer is that the human race would have died out. For some reason I feel the need to be more positive about it though.

If we assume that people wouldn’t all instantly die off if looks could kill I think it might actually be a good thing. The main idea behind killer looks is people annoying other people to such an extent that they give them a dirty look. If these looks could kill people would have to be much more mindful of them and they’d have to try and avoid them. That would mean that people couldn’t just be absolute bastards without natural selection taking over. It would also give people an excuse not to deal with annoying people. A cashier could tell their manager that they need to step away for a second because they’re going to kill their customer and the manager would let them as it could really happen. So if looks could kill people would have to be nicer and more considerate of other people.

Of course that’s never going to happen because people always get annoyed and then we’ll just slowly wipe ourselves out.

Update on previous post: HA! Steady state, that lasted long.

2013-01-02 - New Year Archives

Today is a very special day for the site. As many of you may know it’s the start of a new year which means that when this is posted the archives should automatically add a new section for 2013. I don’t know about you but I’m really excited to see that. My new year’s resolution is, of course, to write more things for the site and I’m sure that will be my resolution for many years to come.

2012 was an interesting year. I graduated, got a shit job, quit that job, got a different job and moved 300 km. It was a bit stressful having to go through two job searches with a terrible employment experience in the middle but I think things are reaching a steady state now. I haven’t written a lot the past few months because I’ve been busy with things but hopefully for the New Year I can get into a routine that includes a nice balance of work, games, writing and my own personal projects. I’ve got lots of plans and things I’d like to do; I just need to find the time and motivation to do them. To that end I’m going to end this post with “To Do” list for the site.

Things to do:

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