Out with the old, in with the new

You didn't think I'd let the year roll to an end without posting some New Year's resolutions, did you? First let me announce (in a soft and somewhat sheepish voice) that I've looked through my logs and discovered that I read 31 books in 2005. Not too bad -- especially when you consider the people who don't read a single book after high school -- but then again, I'm aspiring to be a librarian. And I could have done so much better, too: I didn't read a single book in January or February, then read one in March, one in April, two in March, zero in June, seven in July, six in August, three in September, four in October, one in November, and six in December.

1. So, with that in mind, next year I will read, read, and read some more. At least 70 books, let's say. Preferably over 100 but we'll see. :)

2. Get Beyond to a usable state, hopefully a 1.0 release.

3. Start exercising. Really. :)

4. Learn how to cook so I can move beyond scrambled eggs for breakfast and pasta for dinner every single day.

5. Spend a set amount of time writing each day, and not just freewriting or journal writing but actual pieces -- "real" writing. :)

6. Read all the C.S. Lewis books I haven't yet read.

7. Brush up on my Latin so I can take Latin 301 in the fall.

8. Update Blank Slate more regularly than once a year. :)

9. Visit Thailand this summer.

10. Reply to e-mails within a few days of receipt.

11. Continue to post in this blog every (or every other) day, and write better posts while I'm at it.

12. Start working at the BYU library, in preparation for grad school.

These aren't in any particular order, by the way -- just in the order they popped into my head (which I suppose gives somewhat of an indication as to how pressing they've been in my thoughts lately...maybe). I could go on for another forty or fifty items but twelve is a nice even number (it's a pity I couldn't keep it to ten, huh).

Anyway, I've spent the last hour or so reading through various and sundry blogs online, and I discovered two that I like a lot and will certainly be on my blogroll whenever I get it up. The first is So Many Books, and the second is Rhetorical Response. If only there were more blogs like these! I'd write descriptions but in all reality they can speak for themselves, better than I could do. Check them out!

Books, books, and more books

It was a dark and stormy night. Wait, it's not night yet. Nor is it particularly stormy, per se -- it's more drizzly than anything. Days like these are made for curling up on a comfy couch with a good book in front of a roasty fire. But this is BYU housing and I doubt a roasty fire would go over too well, especially since I don't have a fireplace. :) I did enjoy the end of Till We Have Faces earlier today, as my reward for cleaning the apartment. (Side note: I didn't actually need a reward -- cleaning is a reward in and of itself, and I really do like it.) Part I was long and didn't feel like vintage C.S. Lewis, and I was wondering what on earth was going on -- was I missing something? -- but then Part II began and it all clicked together. The final scene was wonderful. In retrospect, it would've been nice to know the story of Cupid and Psyche in advance, but on second thought it was rather a fun surprise to find out that the basic storyline is Greek. At any rate, I liked the ending and thought it was well worth the read. George MacDonald's Phantastes is next on my reading list. I read it years ago but can't remember much of what happened. It's fitting to read next, considering that it pretty much changed C.S. Lewis's life. Oh, I haven't mentioned yet that I joined the C.S. Lewis Society (local BYU club) the other day. It looks like we'll be reading The Great Divorce. More updates later.

I finally decided to go visit the used bookshop a few blocks away. I don't know why it took me so long -- months and months -- but I'm glad I went. My wallet's in turmoil, though. ;) It felt soooooooo good to wander among the tall stacks of books, with all sorts of tucked away corners formed from the seemingly thousands of bookshelves. If it had been a library, I would have curled up in one of the corners and read for an hour or two, but since it was a bookstore, I figured that probably would have weirded the proprietors out. My main concern right now, though, is to persuade myself to read books from the library first and then only buy the ones I really like. I ended up buying John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Silmarillion (I used to have both, but I gave my copies to my younger brothers), and Luther's German translation of the Bible (in the old Gothic script). I'm definitely a sucker for books. :) (It's a good thing I'm going to become a librarian and not a bookstore owner. If I ever tried to run my own bookstore, I doubt that I'd ever be able to part with any of the books. :))

'ello there

I've decided to take a short break from Beyond so I can work on the layout for a friend's book (Translating Scripture: The Thai Book of Mormon). I got most of the body layout done today (at least the first draft of it), and the rest won't take too long. The only real time chompers will be the cover (the inspiration hasn't arrived yet, but I trust it will come in time) and editing the text itself. I'm really pleased with the results of the layout so far. With the author's permission, I'll post the cover and a sample chapter when we're all done with it.

Cameras

On my trip to Mexico (which I'll write up and post soon), I soon found that I'd much rather take still photos than video. Video's fun and dandy and all that, but editing it takes so much time which I don't really have. On the other hand, editing photos is relatively quick. (Not to mention that my PowerBook only has so much disk space on it and videos are a lot bigger than photos.) So now I've got to decide whether I should sell my camcorder in order to get a camera. And then of course the question arises as to which kind of camera. Right now I'm thinking digital SLR (DSLR), and PriceGrabber.com has various cameras of that sort starting around $550 (including the nice-looking Olympus EVOLT E300 Digital SLR which has a decent 8 megapixels and sells at $548 from at least one of the dealers). I'll have to study the field in more depth before I make any decisions, of course -- perhaps SLR is overkill (but I doubt it).

To infinity and beyond!

Wasn't quite satisfied with the old Beyond logo, so I spruced it up a bit, going for the Aqua look:

Wait, it's Christmas...

This time I was in bed, but the thought came to me that today is Christmas and so I really ought to be blogging about the "reason for the season": Jesus Christ. Who is He? To me, He is my Captain, my Savior, my Leader, my Redeemer, my Friend, my Strength, my All. I really don't know what I would do if there were no Christ. But there is a Christ, and He is Jesus, and He truly is the Son of God. I've never seen Him nor do I really expect to see Him till He comes again, but I know Him. How? By reading His words, in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon. Anyone who really reads the teachings of Jesus and applies them will find their life being changed for the better -- and not just a mere shade or two, but a completely new kind of existence that they couldn't even imagine before. It's real. Can I explain it? Only parts, but that's okay, because I trust Him. I know He is perfectly reliable, good, and worthy of my loyalty. No matter what happens to me in this life, I will not -- I cannot -- renounce my Savior and my King. I've often wondered what it's like not to believe. I don't really know, but it seems like it would be so empty, hollow, and false, like life was a big lie. What of love? What of friendship? What of kindness? These are what make life worth living, and these are what comes from Jesus Christ. Warmth, the feeling of being home, the love in a family. Courage to face any odds, and the conviction of knowing one's cause is just and good and pure. I look at the skeptics and the atheists: their claims seem flat and utterly boring. No God? Have they ever loved someone? I can't understand how someone who has loved someone (not lusted after them, mind you, but really loved them) can say that there's nothing more to life than what we see on the surface.

Since my bedtime is past, let me close by echoing once again that He lives! Christ really is our Savior and our Deliverer, and He rose again on the third day. Someday -- someday soon -- He will come again, in clouds of glory. I stand here as a witness that He is real, and I will stand by this testimony through the end of the earth.

I should be in bed...

I was going to go to bed, but I couldn't help myself. :) So, today in church I was thinking about Christ's statement in John 15:13 -- "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That got me thinking about how we say a martyr gives his life. On the other hand, a suicide takes his life. (If you're picky about my pronoun usage and would prefer some monstrosity like he/she or worse, deal with it. :))

It's pretty clear that giving one's life is an admirable and noble thing, whereas taking one's life is shameful and reproachable. What's the difference? If you're taking your life, who are you taking it from? Yourself? I suppose it depends on the definition of take -- either it could mean it in the sense of stealing or removing to one's own person, or it could mean it in the take/bring sense (bring it with you somewhere). Given the contrast with give one's life, I suspect it's the former, especially because we don't say "take my life to..." as if there's motion involved.

Here's what I'm thinking. When you give your life, it's always for someone or something else -- either another human (saving their life, usually) or God (religious martyrs) or some ideological cause. When you take your life, however, you're not doing it for anyone but yourself -- you're snatching your life away (from God? He has all power, of course, but a suicide disrupts His plan and thus you could call it stealing it from Him) and ending it for you. I guess that's where the good/bad connotations come from -- giving is good and kind and taking is bad and mean. Interesting.

O Tannenbaum

I wasn't planning on blogging today (mainly because of a splitting headache) but I guess I'd better write at least a little bit. Christmas was good, though I've found that in the last few years my interest in getting presents has almost completely evaporated. Not that I'm not pleased when I do get them, of course, but I wouldn't be troubled in the least if I didn't get a single present. Spent most of the latter evening getting caught up on e-mails (and I'm still not quite there). One of my presents today was a book, Richard Paul Evans's The Christmas Box Miracle. I loved it! It's his story of how he came to write The Christmas Box and everything that happened afterwards. (Side note: I discovered today that the presents I like most are books. Good thing I'm going to become a librarian, huh. :)) Well, this coming week I'll be working 20-30 hours a week, writing Beyond, and getting ready for the new semester. But first I have to get some sleep so I can get rid of this dratted cold. Eating lots of peanut M&Ms today probably didn't help much... (Second side note: I'm not a big candy fan, but M&Ms, particularly peanut and/or peanut butter, are almost irresistible. Ditto for Snickers.) Okay, it's bedtime, buckeroo. Oh, one last thing: I finally switched to OS X's Mail app today, after using Mutt (a command-line client) for I don't know how many years. Why? Unicode, ease of use, searching, easy access to old folders, and a few other reasons. I'm happy and it's working great for me so far. I think the new Mail in Tiger has a few cool new features I'd like even more, but I haven't saved up enough money yet to upgrade. Maybe next month...

¿Donde está Ben?

I'm back! Got in a few hours ago and have been busy unpacking and reading e-mails/blogs. The trip to Mexico was great and I'll write more about it later (tomorrow or the next day -- I've got a family Christmas Eve party in a few minutes). Read C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength in our van on the way down and back and loved it. One last thing before I go: I just read an interview with Richard Dutcher over at the Millennial Star, and by golly, I feel absolutely compelled to write a screenplay. Yes, I know, this happens to me often, but I can't help but think that I could do it right. I'm so humble. ;) (And yes, I know that I've said this several times in the past. I keep saying it and now I'm starting to wonder if it's because I'm supposed to do it...) And now of course I need to figure out how to divide my time so I can work on Beyond and write a screenplay and do everything else that needs to get done. It'll be nice having these next two weeks relatively open, other than work. Okay, one last thing: among the pile of e-mails that avalanched onto my desk when I turned on my laptop was a rejection e-mail from the ORCA grant people. That settles it: I won't be going to Wales this spring after all. It's better that way, I think, especially once development on Beyond gets up to speed.

Yo soy gringo

I'm leaving for Mexico tomorrow at 6:00 a.m., so there won't be any updates to this blog (unless I find Internet access at the hotel) until Christmas. I'm taking my camcorder and since I'll have two free weeks before school starts again, I'll edit the best parts into a little documentary on our trip. I got a Mexican Spanish phrasebook at the bookstore today and my goal is to learn as much Spanish over the next week as I can. :)

One last thing: yesterday I saw a copy of an illustrated Strunk and White (Elements of Style). Wow. :)

Lists and lists

I've tentatively put some lists at the bottom of the sidebar, but I'm not sure yet if that's the best place for them. Once del.icio.us is back up (it's not working right now), perhaps I'll put them there. At any rate, I like the idea of regularly updated lists reflecting what I'm reading about and working on and plans for the future and so on.

Almost to the end...

I've been reading up on usability and interface design. Very interesting stuff -- I've learned all sorts of things that'll make Beyond more user-friendly. I read one book last night and I'm starting another one today, and I've got about five more to read through. I'd better learn to read faster. :)

Took two finals yesterday. One went better than I expected, and one fell off the opposite end of the scale. Not catastrophically, but enough to seriously alter my grade, which was disconsoling.

On a happier note, I discovered Ruby on Rails today. I've seen people write about it for the past few months, but for some reason I thought it was arcane and not worth knowing. Judging by their website and the presentations, however, it looks like it's really neat. I'll write more as I delve into it (but probably not for another couple of weeks, since I have one more final tomorrow and then I leave for Mexico).

An eternal golden braid

Took my first final this morning. I'll be done by Thursday, and then it's off to Mexico till Christmas. More on that later. Tonight for FHE we made gingerbread houses, and I had grandiose schemes that collapsed because of a gaping lack of structural integrity. :) I consider myself somewhat of an engineer (my grandfather was an aerospace engineer for NASA and Boeing and other aerospace companies), but I guess tonight the more right-brain side took over, and my feat of engineering became a garbage heap. ~sigh~ :)

I've heard about Gödel, Escher, Bach for a while now but never got around to checking it out until tonight (strolled over to the public library a few blocks away, which was nice because the BYU library's copies of the 1999 edition were all checked out). It looks over my head, but that's good. :) I think I'm going to start volunteering at the library (Provo) next semester. It'll be good training for my future career.

I have too much stuff. I was thinking about it the other day -- the more I have, the more I have to worry about. It's not fun. Case in point: ever since I got my camcorder, I've had to worry about it getting stolen. I already have enough concern for my PowerBook and my iPod -- I don't need to add anything else to the list. Sure, some things are necessary (like my laptop, since I'm a programmer/techie/geek), but there's a lot that's not. I can imagine the freedom of not being tied down by so many material posessions, and it smells good -- like fresh air after you've been locked away inside a stale mechanically manufactured office all day. And so begins my quest to de-clutter my life. I think I'd be surprised at how much I don't really need. In fact, I remember people in Thailand who had little more than a mattress and a rice cooker. While poverty isn't something I'd wish on anyone, even my enemies, I think that less is more (especially for middle-class Americans who have way more than they need).

Beyond the lamppost

Saw Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) this afternoon and really liked it. There were plenty of feel-good moments in it, and the Christian symbolism was a nice change from the junk Hollywood's putting out these days. I want to go to Narnia. :) I'm reading CSL's Till We Have Faces, by the way (80 pages in), and I like it. At first I didn't quite like it, but it's growing on me.

One more week! :)

Today was a reading day, which was nice. Except I didn't do any reading, either of schoolwork or for pleasure. Pity. What I did do was spend the morning doing some Physical Science 100 tutoring, turn in a Modern American Usage paper on "a whole 'nother thing," run home to open the church for the choir to practice (Sunday's the ward Christmas program), go to work, finish designing the banner for Beyond (more on that in a moment), and go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert up at the conference center in Salt Lake. All in all, a good day.

I'll put together a website for Beyond soon, but for now you can keep up with the news on my Beyond Development blog. It's rather empty as I write this but I'll start posting very soon now.

4 Degrees

Here's something I wrote for my critique group meeting (which is in 45 minutes -- I hadn't written anything of substance lately and so I had to come up with something). It's called "4 Degrees," and no, I don't know what it is yet. :)

Curling into a ball and tucking his hands under his armpits to keep them warm, the man next to the garbage bin softly moans in the cold. Snow is falling, beautiful to the casual observer but covered with icy death to those who sleep in the gutter. The temperature dropped below zero a few hours ago. Who will make it through the night? The shelter is full already--they let the women and children in first, which is fine by me. Who am I? I don't really know. I used to have a name, I think. Here they call me Skins. That's all I am now.

I'm walking past the bridge, shuffling really--the ice is very slippery. I'm lucky enough to have some newspapers, but not all are so lucky. Last night my friend Preacher's feet froze. Almost black now. He's in the shelter. Hope he'll make it.

A couple of weeks ago some kids came wandering in. Orphans, probably. Lots of them around. The littlest one was really cold, so I gave her my blanket. Sure is cold out. Got to keep walking, keep the blood moving. Sometimes I jog, but not for long because people glare at me and I can see in their eyes they want to call the cops. And it scrapes the insides of my lungs besides.

There's the edge of town, just past the old well. Nothing down there, at least not any more. Over the summer I bathed in it, but only at night when nobody was looking. Not that bathing really matters anymore. Part of me wants to give up and go freeze to death in the gutter, like the man next to the garbage bin--he'll be dead by morning--but part of me won't let me go. Guess it's some instinct or something. Sometimes I wish I could shut it off. Can't feel my fingers anymore. Got to keep walking, keep the blood moving. If you stop moving, it's over. I'm blowing on my hands to keep them warm. Life's kind of funny like that--you breathe out one way and it's hot, you breathe out another way and it's cold. Some people get the nice life, but others get stuck out here. Abandoned. It's not like I chose this, you know. Things happened and it wasn't really my fault. It was the bank. But do they care?

And there it is: the Turner Memorial Bank. Turner's probably rolling over in his grave right now, the way they treat people there. I hope one of them gets thrown out on the streets so they can feel what it's like. Scavenging for food like dogs. Some people beg. Not me. You have to keep your dignity when you're out here, otherwise you're just like the animals. Except they have fur. Wish I could grow fur.

I'm getting tired. Better find a place to stay. Farms are good--lots of hay--but there aren't many of them left. Closest one's straight ahead. What's his name? There's the rusty old mailbox: Jones. The 'J' and the 's' fell off a few weeks ago. Actually, Preacher borrowed them, but that's the official story. Rules are different out here. You do things you never thought you'd do before. Like scavenging for food like dogs. Got to keep walking, keep the blood moving.

The door creaks open and I slip into the darkness of the barn. Feeling my way around, over to the bales of hay on the left. There they are. There's enough hay out of the bales to cover me, almost. Maybe this'll be the last night. If I have to go, I'd rather go in my sleep. Easier that way. Drowning would be awful, so would fire. If I got shot, would I go right away? I don't want it to take long. It sure is cold. Well, goodbye, world. Hopefully it's better where I'm going. Warmer, too.

Shouldn't I be doing homework? ;)

In the second chapter of Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis, I stumbled across these interesting paragraphs. Descriptions like these were what inspired me to want to be like CSL in the first place.

"In the material about Lewis as a tutor, three of his characteristics seem predominant and can be rightly called constants.

"First, Lewis had extraordinary intelligence. A precocious storywriter in childhood; a brilliant translator of Greek plays and a mature, original literary critic in his youth; a top-notch English scholar in his college years -- all these abilities point to an uncommon mind. In describing his mental powers, his students seize upon superlatives: 'I found Lewis the most impressive mind I had ever seen in action,' and he had 'perhaps the most powerful and best trained intellect in the world.'

"The second constant was his dedication to a lifetime of learning. Among his most worthwhile and pleasurable times were those spent in the study or library. Once he started to read, he never stopped. 'I am a product...of endless books,' he has told us. In his boyhood home, Little Lea, books were everywhere, and he took full advantage of the resources. His lengthy correspondence (1914-63) with his friend Arthur Greeves shows that, wherever he happened to be, he immersed himself in books, not just to cover academic requirements, but out of sheer love for reading, analyzing, critiquing, and expounding.

"'Born with the literary temperament,' Lewis was as compulsive about writing as he was about reading, and his mastery over both gave him an 'aura of learning.' One of his few female students describes him as 'a man of formidable learning' who 'also possessed a Johnsonian power of turning knowledge into wisdom.' The words of a male student also show the basis of Lewis's reputation: 'He was superhuman in the range of his knowledge and in the height of his intellectual vision...' ...

"Behind Lewis's astounding productivity was the third constant: his disciplined work habits. He harnessed his talents and will to a daily schedule....

"Lewis's...schedule would have been less productive had he not learned how to cope with interruptions. And he had plenty of them.... Warren Lewis reports that his brother, having completed his chores, could return to his writing without losing his train of thought. Dame Helen Gardner, a colleague who had observed him at work in the Duke Humphrey Library of the Bodleian, depicts Lewis as 'an object lesson in what concentration meant.' Quite simply, he did not waste time. He focused intently on what he had to do, did it, though often interrupted, and then moved on to the next task." (p.35-36)

Hwæt!

Tomorrow's the last day of class. Mmm. :) I've been rather stressed these past few days but now I feel pretty good. That confuses me, because I still have stuff due. Oh well, I'll enjoy it while I can. :)

In my Old English class today we finished reading "The Dream of the Rood" (a poem about Christ's cross). We've also read the Caedmon story and "Sermo ad Lupi" by Wulfstan and a few others. Fun stuff. I think I'll tackle Beowulf next semester. A week or two ago we read some neo-Anglo-Saxon written by Tolkien about Middle Earth (Silmarillion stuff). And so I've started reading Lord of the Rings again. It's even better than I remembered. :)

Speaking of books, I also began reading Thomas Martin's Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis this afternoon while I cooked my linguine for dinner. Now, lately I haven't been reading as much as I used to, because of school and work and programming and stuff like that. But reading the first chapter of this book got me soooooooo excited to start reading the classics again -- Milton's Paradise Lost and Areopagitica, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and plenty more. One bit that really interested me was a mention of his reading of Grimm in German. I must find a used copy of that somewhere (and then learn German :)). There's something terrifically goosebumpy about reading good old books in the original. As far as translations go, though, one of my friends at work gave me the Spanish translation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe today. It'll be an easier read than La Dama del Alba.

Finally, I spent five hours this evening helping a mission friend record a CD for her dad. (I played the piano.) We practiced for over an hour, then went up to the recording studio. There was a recital hall lined with pianos around all the edges and a glass window which connected with the computer room, which was then connected to the small sound booth where the microphones were for the vocals. So I sat in the recital hall with headphones on while the two vocalists were in the sound booth (which I couldn't see) and the technician was in the computer room (which I could see through the glass window). We'd originally thought that it would only take 45 minutes or so to record nine or ten songs, but boy did we underestimate -- it took around two hours. :) We went through one song at a time, and when we inevitably messed up, he'd re-record us from a few seconds before and try to splice it in. Difficult but it worked in most cases. I don't think we had to record any complete song more than two or three times (but then again we didn't have much time, as it was $45/hour and funds were limited). Once we finished recording, we went into the computer room and watched the tech mix it all together. He used Pro Tools on a PowerMac G4, and it was beautiful. :) (I was sooooo glad it was a Mac and not a PC.) After an hour of mixing and burning, we were done! Quite an enlightening experience.

Wow, lately I've been writing in this blog every day and some of the entries are getting pretty lengthy. Cause? No clue. Oh well. :)

Brrrrrrrrr

It snowed all day today. I think we should vote winter off the island...

The printing press called today (meaning the man at the press, of course, not the press itself, though that would have been pretty cool) and informed me that the proof of my book was ready. (FYI, this book is an assignment in my print publishing class. No, I'm not published yet, at least not any books. There will only be one copy of this book.) So one of my friends from work kindly drove me up to the press and I got to see the first inkling of what the book will look like. The cover got a little messed up (they forgot to set "Simulate Overprinting" in the Acrobat options) but they'll fix it and the rest looked splendid. Better than I expected, even. They said it'll be done in a week or so.

Only three more days till Narnia. I'm going to see it on Saturday with all of my colleagues. (Um, "colleagues" is a fun word but we're just a bunch of college students so "fellow workers" would be more accurate. :)) Having loved the Narnia books since childhood, I do hope that they do as good a job with the movie as Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings, but we'll have to see. If it's good then I hope they do all seven books; if not, just one is enough, thank you very much. :)

I was talking with a friend tonight about how nice it would be if one could say "Accio keys" like in Harry Potter and have your keys fly to your hand (ditto for cell phone and anything else small that tends to get lost). Maybe if you hooked up a GPS transmitter to your pocket and had some kind of supermagnetism... :) On a more practical note (yet still in the imaginative realm, of course), my friend mentioned her idea for UV-coating the edges of contact lenses so you could find them easily when they get lost. (You couldn't coat the whole thing or it would get in the way of your sight.) Glow-in-the-dark contacts would be cool but would be rather freaky at night. :) She also has an idea to put an oil-based layer on the outside of windshields, so that the ice will be repelled and won't form. No more scraping off windshields. That got me thinking: is there some cheap way to prevent ice from forming on sidewalks and roads? Salt kind of works but it doesn't do much good for the local soil, and the ice still forms. Heating could work but you'd have to have a lot of energy to run it. There's got to be a way...

Finally, in my writing class today the teacher mentioned that in the American Psychological Association (or maybe it's the Psychiatric association -- something like that), there's a policy along the lines of "Seeing visions, hearing voices, or feeling impressions to do things are psychoses...except for Mormons." Really. (Well, I'm not 100% sure, but even if it's not, it's a great story. :))

Software thoughts

First off, it'd be really nice to have categories on here... I haven't tried to find out it Blogger does that or not, but it's yet one more reason I'm thinking of moving on to my own host.

Anyway, at work these past few weeks I've been working on Gibraltar, a content management system that will run all of the Center for Family History and Genealogy's websites, including the Immigrant Ancestors Project and the Irish Mormon History site. Why? The main reason was that we needed to create the Irish site, and in the future we'll inevitably have more sites in a similar vein, and it would be much easier to have a framework which we could quickly and conveniently put the new site into. Like cookie-cutter websites, except extensible so they wouldn't be boring replicas of each other (CSS and other things would help with that). So I've designed the whole thing and have written a good part of it, but lately I've gotten bogged down. And the powers that be are anxious (which is quite understandable, since the project has taken far longer than I anticipated).

So, I'm going to switch my focus to getting the prototype up with editing functionality as soon as possible. Which leads me to the real point of this post: design-wise, is it better to build the whole system up first and then release it to the users (thus giving them a polished product), or is it better to focus on one bit at a time and release it incrementally (thus allowing them to use it sooner, albeit at reduced functionality)? There are pros and cons for both, of course, and I suppose it depends on the situation.

Lord of the Dance

It's so icy outside that there was a policeman on the road outside my place just a minute ago putting flares on the road. Winter's too dangerous for me. ~sigh~

Well, the end of school is nigh. I really should have spent today working on homework, but instead I read library blogs, went to Christmas Around the World (more on that in a moment), started designing a Mac productivity app, and went through the Xcode examples so I could start to learn how to write Mac software.

So, I'm not really into dance at all. In fact, I'm kind of scared of it. Don't know why. I guess when I was younger I made up my mind that since I didn't know how to dance, I would avoid it. And fear naturally crept in. Anyway, after watching Christmas Around the World, for the first time in my life I find myself wanting to learn how to dance. :) I have no idea if I'd be any good at it or not, but I do like to dig out my fears and conquer them. Maybe I'll sign up for a dance class next semester. Me, in a dance class?!? What is the world coming to? :)

Other than that, some guy at school yesterday said I didn't sound like I was from Utah. Flattered in a way (not that anything's wrong with having a Utah accent, of course), I started wondering why on earth I wouldn't have a Utah accent. The only thing I could come up with is that my mom's from California and my dad's from Virginia and that ended up in a more universal accent. I don't know if one's accent can be derived like that, though. Interesting question...

Read a neat article on Ten Rules for Web Startups. Other cool sites: Odeo (free audio recording), Flickr (free photo collections), and Talkr (free speech synthesized recordings of your blog posts). Oh, and Getting started with Getting Things Done.

Something's rotten in Denmark

Went to see The Two Gentlemen of Verona today. I guess it's been a long time since I've seen any Shakespeare, but I found it really funny. The performance was good, too. And so now I'm thinking about auditioning for our stake play (which will be in February).

My book is now officially "in" at the press. This morning I got an e-mail from the printer telling me what had gone wrong with it (I'd sent the images in RGB instead of CMYK, the trim was missing, one of the pages had a border around the text, etc.), so I fixed all that and it's done. Phew! It'll be $17. Not too bad. (It's 137 pages on 80# coated bond, 5x7".)

Here's an interesting tidbit I read on Tim Lauer:

Clean Language is a Greasemonkey script that filters out selected text from a web page before it loads in your browser. You can set it up to remove the offending words, or just replace the word with some other nonsense characters. The script comes with a preloaded list of offending words and can be edited to include any words you like. I've played around a bit with it and it works well. So if students were using the Firefox browser with this script loaded, then you would be able to filter offending words not only from Wikipedia sites, but any page that was visited when using Firefox. Am thinking I'll load this script on our next lab image.

I haven't installed it yet but I think I will soon.

Art stuff

Here's some of the artwork I've worked on lately. This first one was a poster for Constitution Day, done in Photoshop:



And this is a map of the emigration routes out of Spain (done in Illustrator, which I love dearly):