Gifted Slacker

Notebooks Fetish and Purpose:

The notebook, to me, is an idea, an all-encompassing repository for my quirky consciousness as it winds its way forever upriver. It’s a continuously evolving incubator, inherently messy, fragmented, idiosyncratic, loquacious, forgetful, quixotic, and occasionally (okay, often) full of half-witted and badly expressed notions.

Elegance:

the most elegant answer to the problem is the simplest one that meets all of the necessary constraints, and is implemented in a readable manner.

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous of my freedom. I feel that my connections with and obligations to society are at present very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which I am serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful, and only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, neglecting my peculiar calling, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.

H. Thoreau
10 January, 1851

If only I were this geeky.

This is fascinating. It provides a sort of C.V. for the Oracle at Delphi.

(Not that anyone cares.)

7:00 - Cereal mixed with yogurt.

12:00 - Schwan frozen pizza.

5:30 - Tuna melt.

Note 1: Buy a new can opener.

Note 2: All times are approximate.

The best sentence I’ve read today:

[...] many jobs that require a college education today will require little in the way of education tomorrow. Many people may then defer college until retirement, in order to increase the returns to leisure by widening their cultural horizons.

OS X is serving as a gentle introduction to *nix for previously *nix-fearing developers. In these users’ next few upgrade cycles they will start moving to operating systems like Linux, OpenSolaris, or the *BSDs.

In the last 3 and a bit days my software has gathered over 125,288 posts from 96,000 blogs. 37,594 blogs have at least one post from that period.

Below’s a crappy table ripped right from the mysql console. The first column is the total number of posts and the second column is the number of sites that have the corresponding number of posts.

+—————–+—————–+
| number of posts | number of sites |
+—————–+—————–+
|             100 |               1 |
|              89 |               1 |
|              87 |               1 |
|              83 |               1 |
|              79 |               2 |
|              75 |              12 |
|              74 |               1 |
|              72 |               1 |
|              70 |               1 |
|              69 |               1 |
|              68 |               3 |
|              66 |               1 |
|              65 |               3 |
|              63 |               3 |
|              62 |               2 |
|              61 |               1 |
|              60 |               3 |
|              59 |               2 |
|              58 |               4 |
|              57 |               1 |
|              56 |               2 |
|              55 |               2 |
|              54 |               2 |
|              53 |               4 |
|              52 |               8 |
|              51 |               2 |
|              50 |               2 |
|              49 |               3 |
|              48 |               6 |
|              47 |               4 |
|              46 |               2 |
|              45 |               3 |
|              44 |               4 |
|              43 |               8 |
|              42 |               9 |
|              41 |               8 |
|              40 |              10 |
|              39 |               5 |
|              38 |               7 |
|              37 |              10 |
|              36 |              10 |
|              35 |              12 |
|              34 |               7 |
|              33 |               7 |
|              32 |              12 |
|              31 |               9 |
|              30 |              16 |
|              29 |              19 |
|              28 |              16 |
|              27 |              32 |
|              26 |              27 |
|              25 |              43 |
|              24 |              28 |
|              23 |              45 |
|              22 |              45 |
|              21 |              49 |
|              20 |              66 |
|              19 |              69 |
|              18 |              78 |
|              17 |              71 |
|              16 |             116 |
|              15 |             106 |
|              14 |             140 |
|              13 |             166 |
|              12 |             184 |
|              11 |             259 |
|              10 |             312 |
|               9 |             410 |
|               8 |             548 |
|               7 |             791 |
|               6 |            1093 |
|               5 |            1699 |
|               4 |            2959 |
|               3 |            5139 |
|               2 |            8170 |
|               1 |           14695 |
+—————–+—————–+

No, really?

The following quote is true of my programming skills to some extent. Definitely for my .NET skills and, to a lesser degree, my Lotus Notes skills.

Most people who perform a job over a number of years will become experienced non-experts, not experts.

The other programming languages I use are more well honed. And I’ve been applying more deliberate practice to my programming theory, though I wasn’t aware of the term.