Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Silent Alarm
March 22, 2011

For Christmas this year, the kids got iPods. Abby’s been using hers for an alarm for a while now, which is a mystifying use of the iPod to me. I’m really taking this as the first signs that I’m getting irretractably old - I like watches and traditional alarm clocks, and don’t understand the use of cell phones and iPods as primary timekeeping devices.

Riley, on the other hand, is not taking to the alarm as well as Abby. At first, we were having trouble getting him to charge his iPod because, unlike Abby who already had a clock with a built-in dock, he was plugging his into the wall near his bed on a short cord, and would often forget to charge it. More than that, since it’s only using the iPod speaker, it wasn’t loud enough to rouse him from sleep when the alarm went off.

Little Projects
March 21, 2011

When I first learned to program computers, each project was a small task oriented towards teaching a specific concept, while building on the concepts that I already had learned. Small projects each solved a single problem or puzzle that you could only use the computer to accomplish.

Project Euler reminds me a bit of this type of individual puzzle, but it’s lacking one essential element for learning: Passion. That’s not to say the puzzles aren’t interesting, and perhaps this is more a factor of my interests today as opposed to what they may have been when I was 8, but after solving a few of them, the novelty wears off a bit. They’re not really solving any critical or fundamental life problem, and my interest in doing heavily computational math wanes in proportion to the number of every day problems I feel like I could be solving.

Spring Signs
March 18, 2011

Deimos was already clawing at my office window this morning, trying to get at something that he saw outside. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, except that he stands in my garden planter and kicks up topsoil all over the floor in his excitement. I hope this is the limit of his craziness this year.

The stinkbugs are starting to appear more frequently, so you know spring is upon us. Sunday is the actual first day of spring, which means free Rita’s water ice.

My Mobile Office
March 16, 2011

It’s a pain hauling around a huge notebook computer in a gigantic bag with a ton of accessories, but I feel like I’m crippled if I don’t have everything that I usually have when I’m at my desktop computer. I usually end up carrying a lot more stuff than I really need, and regretting it. But I’ve narrowed down my on-the-go work bag to a few essential items, and make continued refinements to it.

I have several notebooks, all with different aims, but the one that I use primarily these days is my Acer Aspire Timeline 1810, which is a great netbook - 8GB of RAM, HD screen, fast (Core2 Duo, not Atom) processor, and rated for 8 hours of battery life. It’s just the right size, too, being slightly bigger than the $200-300 netbooks like the Aspire One and the HP variety, but not so big that it qualifies as something to “lug around”. Of course, that’s the most important part of the office kit, but there are a bunch of other essential components.