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February 15, 2005
:-)
I often use the expression “So-and-so doesn’t know anything.” I found an exceptional market for it while in the Army, but later too. I’ve found it necessary to reevaluate this expression, though, after spending a few days with Zoe.
When babies are born, they really don’t know anything, not even how to eat. There’s something about that state that is extraordinarily neat. Zen Buddhist Monks spend their lives trying to reach the state that my daughter lives in now—a child like awareness that views everything as novel and important.
Most of them never reach this state, they just long for their infancy. Learning, apparently, is inevitable. This learning naturally brings bias and interpretation which necessarily limits possible understanding. This is okay—that’s why everybody dies.
There are many things to learn, some more important than others, and though Zoe still knows only one syllable (“La”), still shits in her pants, and still can’t even sit upright, she learned yesterday what may well be the most important skill of her life. She learned to smile.
Posted by james at 07:35 PM | Comments (4)
February 14, 2005
Kid born. Am tired.
Stay tuned for more details.
Posted by james at 05:17 PM | Comments (3)
February 09, 2005
All hail Rowdy! All hail Rowdy!All hail Rowdy! All hail Rowdy! All hail Rowdy! All hail Rowdy!
So I log onto my email this morning, probably for the last time with my full
(because we're having the baby tomorrow) to find an email from the system admin.
of my blog's server. She tells me that some "very silly user" installed some
program and gave the world permission to change things around. Someone in fact
noticed this problem and cracked their server, changing many other user's opening
webpage.
To whomever cracked the system, my hats off to you. Just imagine, you could have
been doing something cool, but instead you got to deliver the following to the world:
rowdy @ 2005 in irc.brasnet.org #nmapsec or #nmap, fuck admins!!!
This message was truly inspiring. I shall no longer be living the pointless life
of an American consumer. I'll devote the rest of my days to the much more noble
mission of helping Mr Rowdy fuck #nmap admins.
Don't write or call--I won't answer. I have better things to do now.
Posted by james at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2005
Open Source Textbooks?
Today while staring off into space, in the general direction of my bookcase, I became slightly jealous of a friend of mine who studied Philosophy in college. All the Philosophy books, for the most part, were written by people who've been dead for a long time, and thus the books are in the public domain and very cheap. Math books, on the other hand, don't follow this pattern and end up being very expensive, even used (though Ebay's Half.com had all my books at nice, cheap prices this time around).
I've always wanted to write a Calculus book that doesn't suck. The likelihood of any publisher picking me up as a writer, though, is NULL for all intents and purposes. I then thought that it might be neat to make an open source text book and problem set, distributed under the Creative Commons license.
I looked at their website today and noticed that a Physics Teacher in California has self-published a series of intro Physics books which one can buy for cheap, or download for free. I just finished taking a look at the first one and I'm quite impressed. He seems to acknowledge that the people that will be using this text might not, in fact, already have a degree in math. I like it.
Anyway, I'm a little more inspired to try to tackle the math book now. The trick, I think, will not be writing it (this can be farmed out, as well) but coming up with an approach that works well. Any suggestions?
Posted by james at 12:48 AM | Comments (2)
February 01, 2005
Down wit' BBD--Yeah you know me
Popular American culture often refers to a "Bad Hair Day." I remember these from my K-12 years. There just seemed to be days when, for no apparent reason, one's hair would not act in the normal manner. Of course, no one else in the world is sensitive enough to your hair style to notice the difference.
Since I don't have any hair to speak of anymore, I think Loki felt it necessary to derive a variation on the Bad Hair Day (BHD) concept that would be applicable to someone like me. He invented a "Bad Brain Day." Like the BHD, a person experiencing a Bad Brain Day (BBD) seems to have a brain that is not behaving in any way that feels normal. No matter what sort of stimulus the brain receives, the brain doesn't respond correctly.
I had a BBD today. I spent 3 hours listening to what probably would have been an interesting and enlightening lecture, had it not been in some combination of Yiddish and Cuneiform. Instead of learning anything new, I spent the whole time in a depressive downward spiral wondering what exactly it is that I've been doing for the past five years.
As with a bad hair experience, some part of you knows that it's probably just the humidity or something, but I found myself in mortal fear, today, that unlike Bad Hair Days, BBD's would be dreadfully obvious to everyone around.
In the end I didn't feel bad though. Some poor chaps have both on the same day...
Posted by james at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)