This can usually be found on Twitter.
I want to be able to put up completely pointless pages like the aforementioned. The venerable jwz writes about the construction work going on outside his window. So pointless, so uninformative, so ... filled with life. I like.
This post was posted by Unknown at 8:40 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
What a total waste of a day. Almost nothing productive achieved whatsoever. My most important contribution I made to my life today will be leaving for home at 8pm, and hopefully sleeping by 10pm, which means I can get up at 6am and come down and WRITE THE STORY I'VE BEEN THINKING OVER FOR THE LAST FIVE DAYS.
On the upside, it's nice to see that in this simulation of Real Life, even a totally unproductive day makes you feel like some (if baby) steps were achieved - I have a Plan for the Export function (the just-renamed FastaBlaster) of TaxonDNA, I have a Request For Quickly Resolving a Bug which I hope to get done with by Saturday at the latest (making for one happy user :p), made plans to watch a movie with a friend after the movies, and made a first (if unsuccessful) attempt at writing "snobol". I have no idea how I'm going to get the writing thing done, but let's see. It'll probably come out all wrong, but I'd rather it came out all wrong on the internet - I can always fix it, and it's nice to have a record. I was re-reading some of my old stuff, and they aren't that bad (if I little lacking in story, among many other things ...).
In other news, I had a dream this morning where I met, I think, three girls in all within the dream, and developed minor crushes on all of them. All of them. And I don't remember anything about any of them now. Sigh. Such is life.
Oh: and a weird, sad news story for all to read and ponder.
This post was posted by Unknown at 8:13 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
if(seq_name.toString().trim() != "" && seq_seq.toString().trim() != "") {
if(names.get(seq_name.toString()) == null) {
names.put(seq_name.toString(), new Integer(spid));
sequences.add(spid, seq_seq);
spid++; // so the next one will be 'new'
} else {
int my_spid = 0;
my_spid = ((Integer)names.get(seq_name.toString())).intValue();
StringBuffer tmp = (StringBuffer)sequences.get(my_spid);
sequences.remove(my_spid);
sequences.add(my_spid, tmp.append(seq_seq));
}
} else {
throw new FormatException("Error in file on line " + lineno + ": something wrong with this line! Is there a illegible sequence on that line?");
Something wrong with the code, more like ... and the programmer!
(p.s. If you write programs, you should really check out The Daily WTF)
This post was posted by Unknown at 7:26 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
(I'm getting tired of starting my blogs with a sigh, but it's almost over! Let me have my sighs when I want doggone it!)
So: first paper tomorrow. Very badly prepared thus far, but hopefully will pull myself together later today. There's not an awful lot in the lecture notes, it's mostly about the “understanding”, which is not something which will change dramatically within 24 hours. If not, well ... it'll be a nice push to study-like-a-maniac through next week before my next (and final!) cluster of exams right at the end of exam period.
Life seems very nice right now - probably it's the sleeping in on Sunday that makes it so :), despite my one bad dream (don't you hate dreams that make you feel like they're happening in the room in which you're sleeping?)
Enough procrastination. Better get working.
This post was posted by Unknown at 4:22 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Upside: Nice to have all those e-mails which were waiting for me replied and DELETED.
Downside: Well … with exams in, oh, I dunno, TWO DAYS, maybe-just-maybe I should be studying, yes?
Further upside: Am happy :). Likes order, however much it might be against my nature. Hope to have a good rest-of-today.
This post was posted by Unknown at 12:12 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Just got an e-mail about a movie about the fight against tiger poaching. This, for me, is what making great movies is about – pulling people in, immersing them in the fictional realities of the present (or, in this case, the decidedly non-fictional reality of the past), and then using that to make a difference. If any of you are in Bombay tomorrow, you should check this out.
This post was posted by Unknown at 10:22 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
I want to learn Spanish well enough to be able to read this beautifully laid out version of the famous book.
It’s not much of a reason, but then I’m pretty horrible with languages, so I have no idea how likely I am to finish this goal (answer: not very). Still, it’s a beautiful language, and it’s worth a shot.
This post was posted by Unknown at 10:05 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
First, to let everybody know: I've linked my blog in to my 43Things page, so some posts (like this one) might seem a little bit weird and out-of-place. Relax, I'm not crumbling under the pressure of school (almost over!), life (almost begun!!) and ... is there anything else? Not at the top of my mind right now, but anyway - it's not me going nuts, it's just that I'm responding directly to a particular goal on 43T, and moaning and groaning at the same time (which is why - hey! - it's here on my blog!). So, yeah. Just to let you all know. Do lemme know if you get 43T accounts, it's *very* easy to track other people's lives on that!
Now, my long-delayed attempt at answering Yvette's question, which was directly about growing about, and indirectly (I think?) about change.
First of all, growing up: as anybody who has had the misfortune of hanging around me for any length of time will be only too willing to admit, I'm not in any sense of the word “grown up”. Nor, to be honest, do I have any idea what it is to be grown up. I don't know many grown ups - parents, relatives, and so on, sure; but in my family we've always been pretty close, and not so uptight about age distances, and besides, adulthood has a different meaning when you're a kid (anybody who doesn't enjoy the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV show) and once you've grown up (anybody who ... ?).
On the other hand, I've had friends who I've seen take on enormous problems, and coming out on top, and they're the ones I'd point to as “grown up”. They've felt the hot wind of adversity, the mocking laughter of unlikelihood, the shuddering cold of ... I pick up writing style from whoever I'm reading (or re-reading) at the moment, I'm afraid, and right now that's a gentleman from Columbia and another from Portugal, and I think that's showing ... coming back, once you've faced real disaster (which I haven't, by the way, just to confirm) - that's when you know you can take the world standing up, and that's (probably) when you do start to stand up.
And what about me? Well, not having faced absolute disaster-in-progress, I'm not sure how ready I am to stand up, and I'm really getting very nervous about graduation coming up pretty soon ... on the other hand, living by myself for the last four years has made me realise that - whether or not I get my tail out in time - I won't be run over by the proverbial train just yet.
And as for change, all I can say on that subject is that I'm all for it :). I like change - I don't like sitting still - I love moving (which is why I like cycling, which I intend to get back to any day now!). Change, by itself, doesn't scare me all that much, although - like most of my family - I carry around the treasured Vaidya gene of overworry, and I although I'm always late for planes and meetings and suchlike, I don't like that very much.
Not done yet. The one thing which scares me about Yvette's post is the sentence
(finish paper 1 hr before Rosh Hashanah. Rosh HaShanah dinner, Tashlich, decide to become a Jew, go vegetarian, Cheshvan, Chanukkah, decide to eat meat for a month, give up on meat again, Purim, moving towards Passover)
and that scares me, because that's a bit like what my life looks like right now (go to lab, read lecture notes for Monday's exam, fix up TaxonDNA bugs, try to get it to compile on Linux, ... graduate, try to learn Spanish, find a good job, etc.) and it's kinda scary not seeing anything in there which is reflects more than a year or so ahead. I mean, just looking at my 43Things list, I have exactly one goal which defines any kind of structure to my life more than a year from now (I want to live on land I own, eventually), which is sort of worrying. But, come to think of it, I don't have anything planned for the next year anyway - really. I mean, there's just nothing I can say with any certainty about today+6 months. The next few months are going to be played strictly by ear, for better or for worse, which - see last paragraph - is scary. But hey - that's what life is all about, yes?
(As an aside, what is it with my friends and relationships? In the last one week, two friends of mine have got attached (separately), two friends are dating, and another friend's crush is ending up in those weird places where crushes go once the crushee suspects something of the crusher ... I'm convinced this is an example of my May-is-the-month-for-affairs beliefs, but who's to say?)
This post was posted by Unknown at 8:40 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
What a painful semester. I have to make the necessary caveats and point out that (a) this goal was FAR from completed as I would have liked it to have been, and (b) that it’s not even entirely over yet. I’ve still got EVERY SINGLE EXAM, when I will go down and try to expound on what little I managed to learn at all this very horrible semester. Multiple sighs.
On the up-hand, NO MORE HOMEWORK. Ever. Really. Well, until/unless I get back to school. I’m really, really, really looking forward to be only forced to focus on one (or five, or nine) things rather than on five totally unrelated things, plus another two totally unrelated, PLUS whatever it is that it is that I want to do in my spare time. Of course, it might be a complete, unremittable disaster, but I don’t think that’s going to stop me from wanting it anyway. =)
This post was posted by Unknown at 8:37 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
One day, I'm going to cycle as much as this guy.
This post was posted by Unknown at 10:16 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
There the Nicest review of Brokeback Mountain yet - more just because of the sheer beauty of the words than his opinions of the movie. But read it anyway. And there's a hilarious article on Mid-day (and an interview with Renny herself), an interesting discussion on Slashdot, and a fantastic photoessay of Dharavi, and you'll see why I'm still up at 3:30am.
This post was posted by Unknown at 3:01 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
See how well I'm doing on DistributedProofreaders (it's a nice, quick, relatively guilt-free way of doing nothing at all, productively, for a while, in between things. One of the things I was stressed about suddenly vanished - puff! - into thin air, so I'm feeling a bit better. A bit.)
This post was posted by Unknown at 6:22 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
Feels sick. Is (probably) sick. And my life right now consists mostly of me diligently not doing what I should, and forcing me to do what I must - badly.
I know it's almost over, and that makes me happy, but my grades are going to be really, truely, genuinely horrible this sem, and I really don't want to face up to that just yet. Besides which I don't have a place to live in after May 14, I don't have a job, and the two (or three) things I really want to do - aren't happening. All in all, not a very happy or positive set of circumstances.
What a year it's been. Honestly. Can't wait until college spits me out, and I get something vaguely resembling my own time again, even if I have to fail all my modules to do this. Moans, groans, sighs.
This post was posted by Unknown at 4:38 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
"A beach house," he said, "doesn't even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate," he went on, "at boundary conditions". "Really?" said Arthur. "Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other."