As a new parent, I've been discovering all sorts of things that have been shrouded in mystery until now. The orgins of obsession, for example.
Why is it women obsess over shoes? I'm not sure, but at 14 months, Emily's already infatuated with them. She runs around the house distributing whatever shoes she can find, only to run around collecting them again. Half the fun of collecting them is trying to put them on.
Lisa discovered that we simply have to say, "Emily, find your shoes," and Emily immediately sets off to search for them. Sometimes Emily remembers where she left them and she's back in a flash. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. But when she returns, she walks up, grunts, and holds out the shoes expectantly. After all, why have shoes if you don't to put them on, right?
When Emily's not trying to put her shoes on, getting Lisa or me to put them on, or distributing them around the house, she tries to eat them. That's right. Eat them. We hope to cure her of this digusting habit sooner than later. It can't be healthy, but Emily's particularly sneaking about shoving them in her mouth. You look away, look back, and there she is, sucking on her shoes. This get's me thinking...when does "grossness" start?
I just bought a notebook computer. It's an HP zt3000. It's great! I recommend it to anyone. Yesterday, the computer arrived at my door. So, what's the first thing I do? Fire up the wireless and surf the web.
Throughout history, man has sought to create machines to perform his labor. In the process, man created giant calculating machines to aid him in his pursit. As the machines have shrunk in size and price, man has realized his ultimate goal: to efficiently do nothing, and do it quite comfortably. And with a great battery, nothing can last a long time.
Now, all I need to do is invent a time machine that can give me more time to do nothing....
[Yes, this new computer isn't helping the apathy problem. It's time to just dig in and get stuff done.]
What is it about the end of a term that brings on apathy? There's something so appealing about the freedom of summer that it makes me want freedom now! Why should I have to wait two weeks? Unfortunately, I don't have time to be apathetic, and I really can't afford to be. I've got way too much resting on the end of this term. I can almost hear the words of APU's president, Jon Wallace, "Finish well!" God calls us to be dilligent--to make good on our commitments. So, I will finish well, but I can't wait for vacation.
For all of you Java developers out there, I have a tip. Maybe you know this already. But just in the off-chance I can save you an hour of frustration, I'll mention it anyway. When running Java Web Start applications, you *can* turn on the Java console! Yes! It's possible. It took me an hour to finally figure this out. And as you might notice from the time, I would have liked to have known an hour ago.
Enabling the console is easy. Simply run the "javaws" application (with no arguments). This brings up the Web Start Application Manager. Click on "File" -> "Preferences". On the "Advanced" tab, check "Show Java Console". That's it. Now you're off and running. Of course, you might want to turn the console off when you are simply using Java Web Start and not debugging your application.
I hope this information helps someone out.
This week, 1 Peter 5:8-9 kept coming to mind. Sometimes I tend to think of Satan as a force, an influence, rather than a real being who seeks to do me harm. I think the society promotes the idea that "badness" is a force and should be resisted with a "good" force. This verse spells it out: Satan exists, is very much alive, and wants to do me harm. Satan doesn't simply want me to mess up, he wants to completely destroy me.
I love how this verse is set in the context of humility. How many times have you been plowed down while being prideful? How often have you seen it happen to others? But don't miss out on verse 10! It's Christ Jesus who, through his grace, has forgiven us, strengthened us, and provides the basis for us to stand on.
The Evolution Connector (ahem "Novell Connector") allows you to connect to Microsoft Exchange using Evolution. Ximian used to charge something like $49 per seat. I loved the idea, but I thought the price was rediculous. Well, maybe someone in Novell (Ximian's parent) saw an opportunity to finally give all Linux users a chance to never need Outlook again. Starting tomorrow, May 14, Novell is giving away Evolution Connector for free! Ironically enough, I'm excited about this and I don't even use exchange anymore. Maybe I'll just live vicariously thorugh my APU buddies. :-)
It's always fun when you post a bug and developers follow up on it. It's exciting. You feel like you are helping to make an open source project better. So, imagine my surprise when I recieved an email today about an Evolution bug I posted two years ago!
I suppose, in all fairness, it wasn't a "bug" so much as a feature request. I didn't like the way Evolution's interface handles account name headers in the folder tree. At the time, I found it really annoying, so it seemed like a bug. Funny how I don't find it annoying anymore--probably because I quit using Evolution.
Thanks to the open source process, I could contribute. Thanks to developers being in short supply, I didn't get what I wanted. But hey, maybe they'll fix it one day and I'll have that satisfied feeling. I might even start using Evolution again. Although, I hear Thunderbird is very good.
This Mother's Day, Psalm 139 keeps coming to mind. I've been thinking quite a bit about raising Emily. Isn't it amazing to know that God created you for a purpose. You are not an accident or simply a fleshly product of biology. You are a person. Through motherhood (and fatherhood), God allows us to participate in the process of bringing persons into the world. It's convicting. I know I've got flaws. I'm not perfect. But then I remember that God created and designed my little girl. God has a plan for her. She's in good hands.
This past week I implemented a motion capture viewer. The program reads in motion capture data from a Biovision BVH file and displays the animation using OpenGL. Very fun stuff. You can watch movies of my results.
I had quite a bit of fun writing the parser for the BVH file. It was a bit of a throwback to my compiler design days. However, I had Boost.Spirit in my tool belt this time. Using Spirit, I was able to automatically create the parser from the BVH grammar. For even more coolness, Spirit uses template metaprogramming to generate the parser at compile time and allow the programmer to specify the grammer in C++ notation. Very cool stuff!
Lisa heard an interesting blurb on NPR about blogging. You can find the clip here, on NPR's web site. It's about 5 minutes. You need RealPlayer to hear it.
Today I took the bus to school. I got stuck there doing work, so I wasn't able to make the last bus home at 6:45 PM. No big deal, I just figured I'd walk home. It's only 2.5 miles. I was impatient to get home, so I figured I'd jog a little. Well, I only made it about 1.5 miles before curled up and died.
It's not like I was running full throttle, and my backpack is only about 15 pounds. I'm just flat out of shape. Muscular Jello. It looks like I need more exercise. I guess I'll be riding my bike more now that it's sunny outside.