conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for December, 2005
December 26, 2005 at 8:35 pm · Filed under random
After 23 years, I finally got my ears pierced. I had second thoughts when I woke up this morning, and more hesitation even as I walked through the mall looking for Claire’s. In the end, I signed the forms, sat in the chair, and just did it. My mom was freaking me out beforehand, telling me how that it hurts like the mofo. In the end, it did hurt, but nothing ridiculous, not even close to getting a shot from the doctor. Now, I feel anxious. I can’t wait until these starter studs can come out (6 weeks); that’s when a whole new world of consumer products will be opened to me. Never will I walk by an earring stand, uninterested, again.
December 25, 2005 at 1:48 am · Filed under site updates
I have to sheepishly admit that I completely forgot about browser compatibilities issues when I made my new blog design. I normally run Firefox, and after so many hours tweaking margins and paddings and layouts to get this page to look “just right” in the browser, the thought never even crossed my mind to check in Internet Explorer. I was horrified when I happened to access this page with my dad’s computer tonight. Ugh, IE is so much less forgiving on math mistakes than Firefox. An error of 5 pixels made my sidebar go berserk.
Anyway, sidebar issue is fixed. I can’t speak for any other browsers besides IE and Firefox. There is still a tiny layout issue with IE, but I can’t debug it for the life of me. Oh well.
In the meantime, can I convince everyone to switch to Firefox? Your health kinda depends on it.
December 24, 2005 at 3:19 pm · Filed under grad life/MIT
At a Graduate Dean/graduate student dinner event that I helped to organize a couple of months ago, I met this guy at my dinner table. Since the dinner, I’ve run into him a few times, but mainly just saying hi during split second infinite corridor passings-by. I felt bad that I didn’t remember his name at first, so I made sure to go back to the dinner guest list to figure out his name. Thursday, I ran into him outside of Kendall. I waved, but he didn’t seem to recognize me at first. When he did, he stopped to say hi, and asked about being a GRT. It turns out that he and I actually met while interviewing for GRT positions last winter, and I had just sort of forgotten about it.
Anyway, so today, I got a friend invite from him on facebook and a message apologizing for having had to rush off at Kendall. Except, I was a bit alarmed, because his profile showed a different first name than the one I looked up on the dinner invite list. Had I been calling him the wrong name all this time? Had we gotten his name wrong at the dinner? I thought maybe it was on of those “I go by my middle name” things, and so I looked him up in the MIT directory.
The directory showed two names, two people, two listings: the one that sent me the facebook invite AND the one at the dean’s dinner. After some snooping around looking at pictures on facebook, I’m pretty sure these are twins, or at least brothers who look extremely similar (ie. twins). The funny thing is that I met each brother separately (GRT interviewing vs. dean’s dinner), so I’m not even sure if they each realize that I also know the other one. There is now also the question of which brother did I actually say hi to those times in the Infinite? Thinking back, there were times when recognition seemed hazy on his part, but maybe I’m just imagining things now that I have new information. And more importantly, how do I tell who is whom when I run into these guys in the future? I’ve never really had to really tell apart a set of twins before.
December 23, 2005 at 12:36 am · Filed under site updates
New look. New blog. New year (almost). The original thought was that I’d work on changing the look of this thing a little bit each day, and I would eventually finish in time by New Year’s, giving this a facelift for 2006. Once I started fiddling around though, I couldn’t stop. When I got a look that I sort of liked, I couldn’t wait until Jan 1 to start using it. So, even though it’s not quite the new year yet, here’s the new look.
The change goes deeper than the look. The complete overhaul comes from the change in the engine behind the look. I’ve given up eblogger for good and moved on to WordPress. The old blog is still around, and is accessible. I’ve ported the entries from this month and last month to this new world. Everything older, you’ll have to go to that link.
So what’s actually different?
- You’ll notice the new “search blog” function on the sidebar.
- There are now categories for posts (I’m still figuring out the best set of these).
- Wordpress offers a lot more flexibility in styling, and it is quite easy to maintain and/or change the styling (I’m big on that).
- This whole thing is now run entirely off of my domain, complete with my own database.
- It’s sweet.
December 21, 2005 at 5:42 pm · Filed under site updates
… a blog overhaul. Some design issues have to be fixed first, but watch for a new look in the next few days. The new look may or may not be permanent. It depends on how creative and ambitious I get with the CSS.
December 21, 2005 at 12:22 am · Filed under daily grind
Sometimes I just get so disappointed with myself. Today is one of those times.
I am disappointed in how easily I lost interest in lab today, how mindlessly forgetful I was, thereby really screwing up the experimental plan I had laid out before leaving for the holidays. I am disappointed in how I am always such a wreck in semi-nervous situations, how I can’t get a grip on myself, and how I end up giving all the wrong impressions. I am disappointed in how I let myself cry again, how little things like a nice overcoat can turn upsidedown whatever reason and logic of which I managed to convince myself. I am disappointed that I am the perpetual B+ student. I am disappointed in how things went today, or didn’t go, with the one person who occupies so much of my thoughts these days. I am disappointed that I can’t keep my word. I am disappointed that I am so chicken when it comes to matters of the heart.
December 20, 2005 at 5:09 am · Filed under current events
Times Online article about polar bears drowning
Drilling in Alaska goes to Senate to be passed
A record hurricane season
Please make it all stop. “President Bush calls [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] the most promising source of untapped oil in America and the key to greater energy independence.” I want to cry. Those heartless politicians had the nerve to lump Alaska drilling into the same bill as allocating funds for Katrina, knowing that people would have to vote in favor of hurricane relief. Filibuster, please.
December 20, 2005 at 3:54 am · Filed under daily grind
Its 3am and I wanna go to bed
I got a lady running through my head
Ran out of money looking for a night shift
Its 3am and I wanna go to bed
- O.A.R.
Okay, so I have no lady running through my head, but I am stuck making gingerbread men without a cookie cutter for tomorrow night’s study break (technically tonight, since it’s 4am). No joke, I am cutting each “man” shape out by hand with a knife because Star sells cookie dough but no cookie cutters. Why did I ever think this was a good idea? Since I’ve already started the “man” shape, and there are already a few batches with them, I can’t quit. That’s just the way it is; I can’t get myself to quit and just use a glass to make circle cookies.
Just a couple more batches of knife-wielding, gingerbread men carving madness. It’s 4am, and I wanna go to be-eh-ed.
December 18, 2005 at 2:47 pm · Filed under the internet
… with CSS, otherwise known as Cascading Style Sheets. I’ve used these off and on in web development for the past few years, but almost always only to define how I want links to appear on a page (underline/no underline, hover color, etc.), nothing more. Not until recently did I discover the true beauty and power of CSS.
This can only mean one thing. I have to overhaul my site and replace it using CSS. Here’s why:
<dorky rant>
Software engineers are perpetually obsessed with the soft concept of the “software development cycle.” There are always new theories coming out, the most recent one being the “agile cycle”, which emphasizes feedback instead of planning. There are plenty of others, and those truly interested can read the Wikipedia entry to find out more. When it comes down to it, a website is just another piece of software, and the process of designing and implementing a webpage is very much a “software development” exercise.
My approach to websites thus far have almost always been the Waterfall, with a bit of Spiral, but not much. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) I am lazy, and Waterfall allows for the least amount of thought paid to future maintainability, which takes a heck of a lot of front-end planning, and 2) I’ve been focusing (perhaps too much) on artistic design rather than practicality. But as the good Ruth Anderson and John Knight once told us, the majority of time spent on software development is actually spent on maintaining the software, so the easier the maintainability a piece of work has, the better it is. My websites may look pretty, but with zero maintainability, they are terrible pieces of work from a software engineer’s perspective, which is really a shame. It also makes it so that I get stuck with the same look/site/layout/style/links for years after making it, because it takes so much effort to update even the tiniest bit of it.
CSS changes all of this!! Check out this example: CSS Zen Garden, and select each of the designs on the navigation bar to the right. The HTML code for all of the example designs NEVER changes, yet the pages have drastically different looks! How? The genius of CSS. A software developer’s dream for maintainability. This freedom is the reason I feel compelled, almost obligated, to overhaul my site. A project for winter break/IAP perhaps.
</dorky rant>
December 17, 2005 at 6:30 pm · Filed under the internet
My love-hate relationship with gmail didn’t end with my deleting my gmail account. I thought that would be the end of the relationship, that gmail would never be a part of my life again. Well, I’m happy/sad to say that gmail and I recently got back together. I am giving our relationship another chance.
What prompted this? Mainly gmail’s cousin: Google Book search. In order to view any results from Google Book search, I have to to have a google account. It then seemed silly to start a google account without getting the gmail with it too. Sure, things didn’t work out so well the first time around, but it wasn’t so, so bad. And if I’m associating with the Google family, I may as well associate with gmail again and reap the benefits.
Somewhere in this gmail debacle, I’m sure there is a “moral of the story” about real-life relationships. I don’t really care to think about it right now.
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