July 2010
13 posts
Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe →
As one of the few astrophysical events that most people are familiar with, the Big Bang has a special place in our culture. And while there is scientific consensus that it is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe, the debate is far from closed. However, it’s hard to find alternative models of the Universe without a beginning that are genuinely compelling.
That could...
Discordianism →
I was thinking about Robert Anton Wilson earlier, and one thing led to another…
Learning to Fail Better →
My war story on a compounded service failure.
Data Driven Startups
Originally found here.
“Aha, I thought. A system that required little to no profundity! Sign me up.”
– Doree Shafrir in a New York Observer story on Tumblr and David Karp.
“We have a vague idea in our head of the “price” of certain...”
– How ‘The Karate Kid’ Ruined The Modern World | Cracked.com
Health Month, The Game →
Health Month is a new game (launching soon) designed to help you find that ever-elusive motivation that you need to improve your health. Here’s how you play. It takes place every month. Before the month starts, you choose your own rules that you’d like to follow. These rules are flexible. You can decide to give up drinking altogether, or you can decide to limit yourself to only 30...
Finally Figured it Out
For years I’ve been trying to be a one blog guy. I like to write about technical topics, but I also just like to post off-topic and personal posts as well. The mixture has never left me happy, which resulted in all sorts of stupid internal conflict / site renames / blog service changes. Jeez. It’s just a blog, man. Right?
Tech posts now go here. Personal posts stay here on...
“And then, at some point, you realize you’re spending your best energy on...”
– Seth Godin
June 2010
6 posts
It's good to be king, if just for a while...
I am now 30 years old. I have spent the past week on the road, travelling from town to town and showing my kids off to family. Today I will finally make it to Oklahoma City so that they can spend some time with their grandparents and meet their aunt and uncle for the first time.
And I will drink beer with my friends.
4 tags
Uploading Files to Amazon S3 via C#
I’m working on a small project to help us extract analytics data from a web server that isn’t directly on our trusted network. After a little thought and mumbling about Microsoft’s lack of a simple file transport mechanism, I decided that I could just as easily push the files that I need to analyze out to Amazon S3 and then have the destination box retrieve them.
Fortunately...
“For me, it means I need to re-examine the choices I make. I need to realize that...”
– Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist - Incremental steps towards uselessness
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Hello, Android
I’ve had terrible troubles with my AT&T service over the past year. Many a dropped call, and way too many super late or missing text messages. Being a sysadmin, a missing text message means that outages go unworked on. Outages going unworked on… well, we all know what that could ultimately mean. Not good.
Yesterday I received my HTC Incredible for use on the Verizon network....
3 tags
Six times in the past three weeks, I nearly deleted this blog. I enjoy writing, and I like the idea that some small scrap of whatever I say may benefit someone in some small way, but whenever I get the feeling that someone is really reading what I say, I run. I’m terribly shy. It’s very self-defeating.
I’ve terminated five or six blogs for this very reason. The moment I...
May 2010
8 posts
Buddha as the quintessential rational mind →
It has become fashionable and commonplace to associate Buddhism with the metaphysical. This is in stark contrast with Buddha’s emphasis on rational thought and insistence on empirical verification. He encouraged the development of theories that were verifiable and was strongly opposed to dogma, which he viewed as an impediment to the truth. To him the truth was supreme, and ideas that hinder...
2 tags
Holy crap. Thanks, Griff.
On Making Art
In any situation, there are limited resources available to you. Upon examining these, you can choose to lament the fact that some or even most are far from ideal, or you can pick up your brush and begin to paint.
1 tag
New Name
This blog is now named SysArcana. The domain will change appropriately, with the old stuff redirecting to the new. The old name was cute, but this one is a little more accurate to what I’m trying to accomplish.
Relax it.
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Fog Creek is Looking for a Kick-Ass Sysadmin →
Somewhat related to my previous post, Fog Creek Software is looking to add another sysadmin to the team. You’ll be working with my colleague Shawn, who is one of the best in the field.
If you have a solid grasp on networking fundamentals and can get things done in the programming language of your choice, they’re interested in talking to you.
(oh, and ignore the picture in the ad....
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Transition
It was announced today that Stack Overflow is getting ready to move into new terrirtory, and I’m very excited to say that I’m going to be a part of that. As of a couple days ago, I am an official employee. Fog Creek has been fantastic to me — and there’s nothin’ saying that I won’t be back there at some point — but for now, I’ve got a whole new...
1 tag
Pulled the Plug
Continuing along this path, I deactivated both my Twitter and Facebook accounts this morning. It’s not that I do not think other people can find value in those services, it is just that I no longer do. They had become a weird driver of anxiety and distraction, like a cheap candy.
April 2010
7 posts
1 tag
griffmusic:
“Apologize” by One Republic.
This...
1 tag
We had an open house tonight, which was quite full. I had a great conversation with Michael, who is now supposed to be sending me information about double-edged shaving razors.
I also saw Marco, but didn’t have the guts to interrupt his conversations in order to thank him for making Instapaper. Tumblr is pretty cool, too.
1 tag
Definitions
If I’m going to stick to the program and write at all on the topic of meditation, it will be best to define it as early as possible. I’m pretty sure that when I say the word ‘meditation’, most will believe that I’m talking about visualization, relaxation, chanting, prayer, or maybe even something to do with ‘chakras’ or ‘inner beings’. This...
2 tags
Late Adopter
I’m not a fan of early adoption in most cases. It never works out too well for me - it just leads to more and more chasing. So, instead of trying to fetch one of those beautiful looking iPads, I decided to go ahead and put my order in for the tried and true Kindle.
I received it on Friday, and was able to take it on the subway last night as I trekked to the party. My first book for the...
1 tag
Now With Slightly More Focus
Six months ago we welcomed two wonderful girls into our home. Prior to that I had spent a couple years exploring various expressions of meditation and building up a daily practice. When the kids arrived, my practice ceased.
I’ve decided to get back to that today. At the same time, it seems like a good idea to start writing more about it. Now I’ll open all of this up by making it...
2 tags
Joel threw a small party for the Fog Creek and Stackoverflow teams last night. It was nice, and I was able to meet Jeff, Geoff, and Jarrod for the first time. I also met the adorable Taco.
Then it took something like three hours to get home. Probably. Since the girls came along, I don’t drink often. I had a total of six beers last night and was unexpectedly lit. I’m...
“On the other hand, if you live a life of privation and spend serious time and...”
– “One in a million” from Seth Godin
March 2010
3 posts
Two Books
With an earlier post in mind, I decided to allow myself to pick up a couple of new book releases.
The first book, Stephen Batchelor’s Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, has been on my radar since it was announced last year. I read his Buddhism Beyond Beliefs some years back, and was inspired by his application of skepticism to traditional (and typically unquestioned) Buddhist...
2 tags
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“Forever”, by griffmusic.
February 2010
3 posts
1 tag
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Heh. In 2005 or so I picked up an MPC 1000 to...
1 tag
Cryptography Engineering is Coming Soon →
Today I learned that Bruce Schneier is releasing a replacement for his excellent Practical Cryptography.
January 2010
9 posts
3 tags
Beyond Theology by Alan Watts
I read this over the past few days and give it a big recommendation to anyone who would like to explore the idea of rescuing Christianity from the pulpits of the literalists.
In this work, Watts uses Vedanta to give new life to the Christian tradition, and then turns things around to show us how this new interpretation of Christianity can actually improve or complete Vedanta - something I did...
1 tag
I finally closed down my old site, retiring that domain for some other day.
I’ve also been letting boatloads of domains expire instead of renewing them. It’s good to clean out the closet from time to time.
Ommwriter →
From the site:
A wise man once said “We are all at the mercy of our wild monkey minds. Incessantly swinging from branch to branch.” With multiple windows and applications all vying for our attention, we have sadly adapted our working habits to that of the computer and not the other way around.
Ommwriter is a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us...
2 tags
Apple and Red Cross accepting Haiti donations via... →
mrgan:
Apple and the Red Cross worked together to create a frictionless way to donate to the Haiti relief effort through iTunes. Click the link (or hit the iTunes Store on your own) and pick your amount - that’s it.
It’s that easy. If you have $10 (or more), send it on to those in need.
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what...”
– Ernest Hemingway via Boost your productivity with Hemingway’s hack
“My more perceptive readers may be wondering at this point whether I’m seriously...”
– The Archdruid Report: Housebreaking the Corporations
2 tags
Things UNIX can do automically →
This is a catalog of things UNIX-like/POSIX-compliant operating systems can do atomically, making them useful as building blocks for thread-safe and multi-process-safe programs without mutexes or read/write locks. The list is by no means exhaustive and I expect it to be updated frequently for the foreseeable future.
December 2009
47 posts
