Aug 18 Reading never gets old. Well not to me at least. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed during my life, and it’s something that I make a point out of continuing to do.
In any case, I just finished The Foundaction Trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
Why is reading books never old (in comparison to reading things online)?
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They’re available even if there is no electricity.
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You can take them anywhere, even if there is no Internet connection there!
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They’re sometimes more readily accessible than reading things online. Try searching for copies of all of the classics freely available online.
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You get cultured when you read them. How else will you know where famous sayings and quotes come from if you don’t actually read them? It’ll make you look less ignorant when someone uses a quote from a book and you’ve already read that book.
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It gives you an aspect of your life that is actually changing. Even if everything around you seems to be droning on in the same old manner, at least you’ll be able to talk about how the book that you’re reading has been exciting (or not) to you.
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You look more well-balanced to other people. Someone who is reading looks a lot more balanced than someone who is staring at a computer screen all of the time, wouldn’t you say?
Do a lot of people still read? I have no idea. I was also tempted to put something related to decreasing chances for poor eyesight, but I don’t actually know if that’s true or not.
That was a lot longer than I had envisioned that post being.
Aug 17 So I finally replaced the favicon for my website. I suppose that it’s been on my TODO list but at a low priority. So low that I didn’t even remember it. Someone bringing it up will definitely bump that baby up.
So I decided to replace the favicon that was either
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A piece of poo
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A faucet
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A faucet of poo
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The letter P
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The road representing the path that the wong way is
Obviously everyone thought it was the last choice. In any case, I went for a little different approach. Now even though I’m no pro at creating images, I was still able to make one and put it up (as I said in Favicons).
This time I went for a couple of arrows. At first I was going to put multiple arrows going one way and a single arrow going the other. However, it looked pretty junky when I converted it to a tiny picture. So I decided that enough with the nasty favicons, I’m just going with something simple. So there you have it, take it how you will. At least it doesn’t look like a piece of poo anymore.
Aug 15 On one’s computer, everyone has a structure. Some are more organized and some are not. Some have files in a very hierarchical form while others will save files willy-nilly.
I think that I used to be more of the latter but have more recently moved towards the former. And that’s a good thing. It probably has to also do with how I want to be neater with my physical possessions as well.
Here are some of the ideas that I’ve keyed off:
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Use the date - I will create filenames that are similar to each other for a particular folder and then just append YYMMDD to the end (and possibly HHMMSS if need be). If you don’t know, that means that I append the last 2 digits of the year, the 2 digit month, and the 2 digit day. I suppose that I should learn from the whole Y2K fiasco that I should use YYYY to truly be safe, but I don’t really think a lot of my stuff is going to matter when I’m gone. Because I’m pretty sure that I will be gone by the time the dial rolls around to 2100. In any case, this method gives you a reliable way to sequentially order your files. The time stamp that operating systems have on files is a little bit unreliable since it can change simply by modifying and saving the file. I especially use this for things such as copies of payment for monthly bills, program backups, etc.
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Have multiple levels of folders - In other more technical terms, have multiple layers of abstraction. It sounds complicated perhaps, but it’s a good thing. A really good folder structure will infinitely help your access to particular files. For example, storing music is much easier when I have used the folder structure: Artist->Album->(music files). Previously I have done many methods including all in one folder, by type, and willy-nilly. None of those worked particularly well when I wanted to find something.
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Have a temporary folder - Use this folder to save anything that you might want for now, but won’t be a huge loss to you if it gets deleted. A short-term place of storage if you will.
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Be as specific as possible - For my pictures, I store everything in folders according to the event or time that they were taken. I think that optimally I would be able to name all of my pictures exactly as I see fit with the pictures’ content in the filename. However, I don’t care enough to spend that much time. Still it’s very useful to store things by as specific a means as possible (in this case the event is as specific as possible).
Okay for now that’s all I’ve got. But I’m sure that over the years I’ll incorporate other ideas into how I set up my computer’s file structure. Any new ideas are definitely welcome!
Aug 13 Be as adamant when wrong as you are when right. -Derek Wong
I might not be there. Okay I’m definitely not there. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not still good advice!
Aug 10 I like games. Some games I like more than others. I’m particularly a fan of word games even though I don’t get to play them all too much nowadays. I like games that involve decision making because that increases the possibility of losing. I like some card games, but I’m no gambling bo. (Why bo? Why not?)
Over at Ramblings From The Marginalized, Steve has just created Quartile. Yes that’s right, he made the game. That is pretty amazing, I think.
So looking at the game, it seems pretty interesting, even if the concept is a bit simple. It seems to me to be a mix of Scrabble and dominos where instead of piecing together words with letters, you place seemingly domino pieces in arithmetically corresponding spaces. I must admit that it even seems simple when I write that, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t also look enjoyable! Just look at the Wii, it’s doing so well because it purports to be a simple to use gaming system that focuses on fun rather than complexity!
In any case, he has this pretty cool offer to give away one of his prototype marble sets. (The retail sets are made of wood as that is obviously cheaper to produce.) So check out his site for more information on the whole shebang.