Adam's Blog

I've long been fascinated by the sonnet. The awkward three stanza arrangement. The sing-songy feel but the absense of too strong a rhyme. I've written a few, and I've decided that I'm going to post some of them here. Despite "sonnet" actually stemming from the term "sonetto," meaning short song, sonnets are generally meant to be read as sentences, not especially in stanza form. Anyway, this is sonnet #5.

From January first it's hard to see whatever lays before us, far or near. Designing different fates, but what will be will be despite resolving else this year. The clouds that cloud the vision in my mind cannot contain the sunlight rays that band together, shining promises I find give comfort as she holds me by the hand. So while we wander round this endless rhyme, and searching for a meaning to it all, I find that I can face the plain of time if she is there to catch me when I fall. The plan to play an ever-growing part, made easier when cradled by the heart.

for JPS

Using Flock was kind of a long shot. Flock is based on Gecko, like Firefox, which has given me a lot of problems. Flock served me well at first, but then starting gobbling up RAM. So, I'm pretty sure I've narrowed it down, for me, to XUL and extensions. I'm not sure exactly what's to blame for the specific problems I have: other programs on the computer? a single bad extension? I don't know, but whatever it was, it was present in FF1.5, FF2, and Flock. And each had their own set of extensions installed. It's not a core Gecko problem, because, as I showed before, Camino doesn't have the same problem. So, at the urging of Nate, who, I guess, also spends some time at his computer, I decided to go for a full time ride at Opera. I don't require THAT much from a computer: mainly, it has to be able to sustain my browser requirements. And those are tough, because I expect to be able to open 10-15 tabs and still have the browser function without (a) eating up greater than 200MB of RAM, (2) eating up > 10% of the CPU for more than a few...

This is it. Last post of 2006 (EST). After this, we're on our way to A+J's house. A happy, healthy, safe new year to you and yours.

You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 65% Superman 60% The Flash 55% Spider-Man 55% Iron Man 50% Supergirl 40% Wonder Woman 35% Catwoman 35% Hulk 35% Batman 35% Robin 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Since I didn't say it before, happy holidays and to everyone. Have a safe and happy New Years! ~~ Edit: there was a Quicktime movie snip here, but I've moved it to the body of this post at the urging of some to improve page load time. I won't make that mistake again, sorry. ~~

I missed the hoopla over the last week stemming from Thom Holwerda's piece on OSNews called Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst? His follow up piece, entitled On Favouritism, Apologies, and Black Helicopters, which sounds like the personal musings of a short story author, attempted to clarify his points. I have a lot to say on this, so if you're interested, read on for the meat.

Well, I'm back from New Orleans. Christmas was a blast, and I got *a lot* of great stuff, but most notably, my lovely wife kept her eyes open and secured me a Nintendo Wii. I was so psyched to play it, and I am actually sore from it right now, no kidding. The thing about the Wii is this: it's really really FUN. It's so different from playing a game while sitting down. Playing the games, moving around, designing a Mii -- even watching other people play it is fun. It's just fun. There's no better word. New Orleans is... well... what I expected. Much of the city is mostly back to normal, although traffic is crazy on the West Bank since much of the eastern part of the city is honestly unchanged since Katrina. It's pretty amazing and eye-opening to see parts of the city worse off today than they were a year ago. Parts of the city are literally abandoned. It was also great to see the in-laws. They once again received us openly and we had a great, relaxing time. They fed us well, kept us warm, and gave us another great Christmas. I also missed quite...

The headline actually reads: "Congressman: 'I Fear ... We Will Have Many More Muslims In The United States'," but it might as well read the same as my headline. Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginian Republican, uttered this masterpiece. These are the words of a coward. The words of a rascist. The words of a fool. And what's worse, there's nothing more unpatriotic than uttering a phrase like that. You see, I read stuff like this ridiculous comment online all the time. Let me quote "Answeil Vachette (R) Va.": "America is Christianity.It is the 4th largest religion in the world.This nation was founded on Christianity.It is the fact." Where do people come up with this stuff? Anyone who has studied history ought to know better. I often hear people mutter this nonsense about America being founded by white Christians in the Christian vein, but it WASN'T (1) (2) (3) (4). I don't care what you read online. It was founded by people fleeing religious persecution who went to great lengths to NOT write any religion into the constituion and laws. In fact, religion is mentioned twice in the Constitution, once in the first amendment which prohibits laws "respecting an establishment of...

Forgive me if this sounds especially arrogant or offends anyone, but I think I should be asked to join Google as the project lead for Picasa Web Albums, because I am really let down by what exists today and I think that I might be able to write something better myself with a week's worth of programming and a server running PHP5. Google has always been a "release now, update frequently later" kind of company, and I respect that. It's cooler, as a user, to get something today and slowly and unexpectedly watch features trickle in, but Picasa Web Albums is a disaster right now. Read more for the details.

This weekend, Jenn and I did something we really have never done before: we set ourselves in front of the TV for a marathon. We watched all six hours of The Lost Room consecutively. It was actually quite a bit of fun, and we really enjoyed the show. Afterwards, we agreed that we were exhausted and that we needed to really get moving on Sunday. The Lost Room felt a lot like Heroes in that instead of people with powers, we were learning more about objects with powers, and unlike people, where there's a whole character to meet, it was easy to introduce new objects with little responsibility to develop a backstory. The only real problem was that it never really explained who was good and who was bad, nor did it explain where the story goes now that Joe has... well... done what he did in the last scene, which presumably ends the storyline pretty damned dead in its tracks. Anyway, I liked it, and I recommend that if you haven't seen it, you check it out when it makes its way to DVD.