Last Long Programming Project for the Spring Semester
Posted my last programming assignment of the semester to code.WorldMaker.net.
Free Story Idea: Pirates of Louisville: An Alternate History
I love playing around with the idea of pirates in my hometown. (One story already I'm working on involves such.) Louisville, Kentucky actually was a major and important shipping stop in the early history of the country. Up until the creation of the Portland Canal and then the McAlpine Locks all river traffic had to stop in Louisville. So I was playing around with alternate history settings where pirates might naturally have developed in this city. Here's what I came up with, from what little I remembered of Kentucky History from middle school (feel free to use it, I don't have the patience for alternate history research and writing, I'll wave the share-alike for this idea if you want):
The French-Indian War goes badly for the British Colonists. Britain says they'll send more support, but fail to do so. What little government there is of Kentucky swings to support the French. (This was actually considered more than a few times. Kentucky has long had a history of being extremely libertarian, and spent a long amount of time examining the offers of joining both the Spanish and the French colonies before deciding to be the 15th State.) The few British fighting for the Ohio Territories, sandwiched by the French and French supporters probably either die off or surrender. British currencies stagger and fall in the Colonies as a lot of trust is lost between the British and Colonists, the French currency becomes the defacto standard in North America. Assuming that New Orleans, the southern "capital" of French Colonization, and Montreal, the "northern" capital, become large banking centers of North America, there would be an awful lot of cash and goods flowing from Fort Duquesne (previous Fort Prince George, in our history later became Fort Pitt, and ...
Quote of the Moment
Found in someone's signature:
The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
I guess I just haven't found the company that hires for these virtues, because I have the first two and am good at faking the last. :-P
Good day in the rain with a tinge of drunkenness
After the second checkin today and lunch I made the decision to start drinking. I just now stopped. Of course, there was a several hour break in which I wasn't technically "allowed" to have alcohol, but prohibiting drinking at a Football Stadium that sells alcohol is just funny. Amidst all this, weather happened. Some great rain, an awesome hail storm, and even some time spent visiting the visitor's locker room while we waited out the tornadic activity downtown.
Watched the Football "Spring Game", and listened to part of a Nappy Roots concert. Signed the paper to guarantee my soul to the University for season tickets. (There were actually two of these this year, but I didn't sign the other which was for so-called "Priority 1" ticket buyers and contractually obligated those students to wear a red shirt to basketball games among other things.)
When I got back, we watched This is Spinal Tap. Ah, even funnier drunk.
My only annoyance with the past several hours is that I left my backpack in a friend's truck and the backpack had a few drinker's snacks (chex mix, chocolate), which would be nice to have right now. It should show up soon enough I guess. I hope the chex mix doesn't spill all over the inside of the bag, not that I guess its a big deal or anything. I guess it has to be a good day if my biggest worry is whether or not the chex mix in my backpack has spilled out of its bag (I opened it poorly, I admit).
The Struggles of the Late Spring Semester Slowly Sucking the Substance of my Soul
I was late to every class today, that I attended. Hell, I was late to being late for one class. The allergies have been going on for nearly a week now. I decided that why bother taking classes if you can't have at least a little fun so I got up really early this morning to wait in line for season tickets for UofL basketball and football. Triangle did the opposite of rock hardcore (sand softexterior?) this year. In three years, my personal position in line: 5, 9, 144. Partly its to blame on communication issues. Partly its to blame on these darn youngsters. All the old guys that I went with these last two years have either graduated, while graduate soon, or fell to the knife of the new graduate student ticket system. If I'm here in the Spring, I might make it my mission to beat some sense into these kids on how you grab a good spot in line.
I don't know what I'll be doing come next Spring, though. But let's not get into that discussion just yet.
I saw an advertisement I thought was cool, today. A group is renovating this ugly warehouse building (I believe it is a part of the ex-Ralston-Purina property, but I'm not certain) that is directly across from the football practice field (thus catacorner to the football stadium). They are converting it into "sports lofts", which might be interesting. It also happens to be a great location about equidistant from both Kroger and Campus.
Finally, I just want to say how much I hate group projects and wish I could smash in the face of a large number of people. Apparently my whole lot in life is to be stuck in crappy groups by ...
The Jihad is at hand!
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Jackhammer of Desirable Mindfulness.
Second draft of The Business of Liberty
I've posted the second (and final required) draft of The Business of Liberty. One of the coolest things for me was that I recieved a correction (which has now been incorporated) from one of the people mentioned in the paper. The teachers wanted this draft to be shorter than the first, but I'm a long winded guy and realized that was not possible for me. This second draft is just slightly longer than the first (the average of the changes resulted in it being about a paragraph longer than the first).
Book Meme
I'm not much for some of the goofier meme-things that get randomly spread across the internets, but this one is about books, so it is hard to resist. Also, because tas tagged me with it.
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The book is so covertly anti-agenda (it mocks everything from beauracracy to religion) that you just now that when the books start burning the entire H2G2 series will be some of the first of burn lists. On the other hand, the book is so overtly humorous and optimistic amongst easy pessimism that everyone should read it hiding in their basements while waiting for the Firemen. At least they'll have a few laughs before being accused of their crimes. It might even give them some ideas on how to deal with. (By the way, I definitely plan to bring my towel the 29th when the film opens in theatres.)
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I'll admit that I will often get swept up into the characters that I'm reading/watching. Most recently it was Kada thanks to today's Sluggy Freelance. How I can not crush on a crazy geek chick stuck in the Timeless Wastes and deciding to go "full pirate" wearing a shirt that says "Wet Nerd Pirate"? Next most recently it was Megan, Bast, and Rachel of Emerald Sea.
The last book you bought is?
Friday, I did some studying at the Heine Brothers' Coffee on Longest Ave. Conjoined to the Coffee Shop is Carmichael's book store. It was so hard to resist wanting to browse the stacks of the small local book store. Then, it was even harder to resist buying anything ...
The Wealth Diaspora: Paying it Backward
To pay it forward, you give for the sole benefit not of yourself, but of your children's children's children. This has been associated with (in part thinks to the semi-campy film of the name) wild karmic Random Acts of Kindness, but doesn't necessarily by the original definition.
The weird thing about our culture is that somewhere in the last half century we suddenly (in economic timescales) started paying it backward (in a cultural sense, at nearly every level). The modern credit system has enabled us to spend now, for the sole benefit of ourselves, and leave the burden of payment to ourselves at a later date. It's amazing really, how short-sighted it is. On the other hand, it isn't hard to see why the often Armaggeddon-obsessed Conservative backward-lookers often don't see a problem with this sort of "ownership society" in which what I have now is based only on the potential of what I might have in 50 years.
Debt has become a reverse commodity. The sure irony of it all is that even with its IOU nature, which to the average person says that it is worth less than the money it takes the place of, debt has become in some cases more valuable than the money it represents. Visa freely gives you that $15,000 credit this year because it is really worth more than that to them. What's more, after brief "trustworthiness verification" they manufacture as much debt as free and easy as they want. In essence, Visa is printing an equivalent of money for free whenever they feel like it and their "feel like it" revolves solely on the potential of a person and their assumed trustworthiness to pay it back(ward). In economic theory, in the end (the ...
Book of the Moment: Shadow of the Giant
Shadow of the Giant was a real quick read for me. I finished it in about 4 days. I was surprised at how easy it was to slip back into the political intrique of the Ender Universe Shadow novels. The interesting thing about this one it the twist in storytelling. I realized after the fact that the name is quite apt. In this novel the now giant Bean isn't the center. It was a natural progression of the story in Shadow Puppets, really. The story does a great job of wrapping up the lives of two of the main characters living under the shadow of Bean: Peter the Hegemon, and Petra, the woman he married and had kids with in Shadow Puppets. The interesting and somewhat surprising thing is that there is still so much to tell. I won't provide too much in the way of spoilers, but the book provides some excellent bridgework into the Speaker of the Dead trilogy, and ends with a glimpse of the unified earth (as was obviously what the last three books were leading towards, and is obvious from early in the Speaker of the Dead trilogy). What it just barely gives us, however, is a glimpse into the early to mid colonozation period (if the Speaker of the Dead trilogy were to say occur in the late colonization period), and those are some threads that are desperate to be unravelled. (Spoiler (scratch and see): Particularly the brief tangent involving Randi and her child (one of Bean and Petra's stolen embryos), given the name of Achilles Flandres II, has only just barely been scratched, and really needs to be unravelled.)
I am looking forward to the next installment (I will make the prophecy/suggestion that one of the next books needs ...
Book of the Moment: Emerald Sea Conclusion
Finished Emerald Sea tonight, which means I'll have a new Book of the Moment up soon enough. The best part of the book, in my opinion, was the postlude. The postlude paralleled the timespan of the novel, but wasn't intertwined into the main narrative for a couple reasons. The first was that is obviously was too distant from the main storyline. In Emerald Sea, John Ringo has done a much better job in these last two books (The Council Wars) of constraining all the story elements in each novel into a tight focus on only a few main characters. (This has always been a huge problem with me in my own writing, so I really respect it seeing it here.) The second reason, which was placed in bold print in a warning to the postlude, was that the story contained some direct references to sex and sexual acts. None of which was gratuitous, by the way, as the tale was one of "prisoner's dilemma" tale set in a harem. The main character, Megan, a relative of one of the main narrative's secondary characters (the spy Joel) is another of Ringo's many strong-willed, intelligent female characters. The drama of Megan dealing with this situation, and the particular character who shows up in the latter half of the tale, was quite engrossing.
The sad part is the fact that John Ringo felt he needed a warning on it. I smelled something of a whiff of sarcasm in the warning, so I feel that perhaps he knew it. One of the biggest shames is how backwards and bizarre we can be in this culture. John Ringo is largely a Military Sci-Fi writer. Military Sci-Fi is brutal, violent, and ugly (as is war). It's all very graphic. But ...
Comm 112 Persuasion Speech
On Monday, the 4th of April, I presented a speech on copyright and why a business oriented person should keep the Creative Commons licenses in mind. Basically, I boiled down my Ethics & Law paper into digest form. They go well hand in hand.
- Outline - I'm not too happy about the formatting (full sentences instead of topic names), but it is the format the teacher requested.
- Presentation - This the PowerPoint file I used.
Bathetic Introspection
This weekend marked the capstone of a long string of entirely diabolical weeks. Monday's speech presentation (to be posted) marked the final of my solo projects thus do, leaving only a couple group projects to worry about. I did pretty well considering how royally I screwed up. Basically, my seasonal allergies hit Sunday night, and combined with just a bit more heat than the previous nights and a curve ball weekend schedule, I had an abysmal sleep. Therefore I completely expected the overnap I took, but expecting it only made it worse. Luckily, I've made it to that class every day and on time (which is more than I can say for previous semesters), and I think that the teacher is going to overlook it. (This even includes a class period in which I wasn't even enrolled in the class.)
Before the allergies, one of the curveballs was the unannounced downing of the University's webserver that contained my Fraternity's webpage. Being still the only guy with technical knowledge of the website I made sure a backup was up by the end of that day, much as I would rather have worked on other things.
Another part of the pain of this weekend were a few awful bouts of introspection. The main one, on Saturday night, I can blame only on myself because it was partly alchohol that caused the depression and anger. I worked on my tourette's-like cursing. My 21st birthday is this coming Monday and I was thinking about how little I've accomplished. Here I am, shitty GPA, no job, and no relationships with the fairer sex. I'm at that point in my academics that the starting point is off past one horizon and the ending point I assume is past ...
Random Networking: Omidyar, We Are Not Evil, Go2Zero
The great power of the Internet is how it truly does put just about everyone on a level playing field. Slowly new mechanisms get put in place to let the best ideas bubble to the top and get the attention they deserve. Some of the sites that I visit every so often are Slashdot and The Facebook. One is for technology and geek news filtering, the other is for social networking amongst college students. Lately I've added The Omidyar Network to the list. I've actually had the Omidyar account for some time now, but never actually used it until a few days ago. It has been intriquing. My Dad pointed it out to me as a possible place to interact when he read about it in Esquire magazine. I'm not sure why he didn't just join himself, but maybe he feels he is out of ideas this late in life. I might mention it too him. The Omidyar Network was founded by Pierre and Pam Omidyar who gained a lot of money from the success of eBay. In their search for good business proposals and investment proposals they created this website which acts as basically an "eBay for ideas" allowing for good proposals and good ideas to bubble to their attention. My own involvement has started small. Curiously enough it started where so many of my enterprises over the years have started in that some of my early writings have gone towards helping with simple computer problems. At the moment I'm not entirely sure where I expect to go with it or what I expect to get out it, but it never hurts to make new friends. Same reason I interact with The Facebook, really.
I found (or refound, as I believe is the case ...
