reflections
Will Faught
July 2009
I just finished watching the extended versions of the Lord Of The Rings films. I’ve had these versions for several years now, and I thought I’d seen them all, but watching them now, so many of the extended scenes felt new to me. Strange. I can’t decide if it’s because I forgot them, or because I hadn’t watched them yet, which would be quite an oversight for a fan like me.
dvds extended films life lord of the rings reflections
1 minute
June 2009
My sleep schedule was shifted back by about three hours for a couple weeks following my Nicaragua trip. I woke up wide awake at about 6 a.m. and I felt sleepy at about 11 p.m. I’m now back to my regular night owl hours. I’ve traveled to other time zones before, but this was unprecedented. I think my trip caused it, but I don’t know how. I was amazed at how easy it was to get out of bed when I woke up wide awake.
life nicaragua reflections sleep washington
1 minute
I really like the song “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga. The sound grew on me, and now I love it. I especially enjoy the lyrics. The wording is colorful and rich and paints vivid pictures using few words. It’s delightfully dark. Here’s an excerpt: I want to hold them like they do in Texas plays Fold them, let them hit me, raise it, baby, stay with me (I love it) Luck and intuition play the cards with spades to start And after he’s been hooked I’ll play the one that’s on his heart
lady gaga life lyrics poker face reflections song
1 minute
May 2009
The cleverest title I’ve ever seen was “My Title Is Clever.” I remember thinking, “Huh, that’s clever,” and then, “Whoa!”
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It’s amusing that Republican politicians throw around the word “liberal” like it’s a dirty word, an unthinkable state of affairs, rather than the counterpart to their own extremism on the opposite end of the political spectrum. As if the word itself makes their argument for them. They’re just so scandalized by it. I never hear the word “conservative” used this way.
conservative liberal life politicians politics reflections republicans
1 minute
April 2009
During a speech made by President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, in which he called Israel a racist nation, several national representatives walked out of the audience in protest. I imagined myself there, and feeling compelled to walk out to symbolize my repudiation of what was being said. However, I’d actually want to hear the rest of the speech. Not because I agree with what was said, but you have to admit, it really grabs your attention: a whole country—racist!
iran israel life mahmoud ahmadinejad president reflections speech united nations
1 minute
March 2009
This recliner has been with my family for as long as I can remember. Sadly, I no longer have a place for it and it must go, finally passing from us to parts unknown. I’m sad to see it go. It feels like a piece of my past will be lost. I wish we could all have museums of our lives, so we could keep all the things that mean something to us when we have no where else to put them.
chair family life memories museum recliner reflections
1 minute
January 2009
I went shopping at the Costco in Seattle for the first time today. They didn’t give me any bags or boxes in which to carry my stuff, so I had to carry a few items at a time from my car to my apartment. On my first trip, I put together an armload of provisions, and thought I could add to it a two-pack of Clearasil facial cleanser, but it was too much.
clearasil costco garage home life neighborhood reflections robbed seattle stories thief
2 minutes
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Things have been busy and it’s been hard to find the time to blog. In case you haven’t heard the news, Microsoft laid off 1,400 employees today, 800 of them in the Redmond area. The layoffs reflect the worsening economy and were announced in conjunction with the quarterly financial report released today, which showed that profits are down compared to the same quarter last year.
layoffs life microsoft redmond reflections work
2 minutes
December 2008
I started my holiday vacation this evening! Well, actually I started it around 1 PM since I couldn’t drive to work or work remotely and I realized the latter about then. So I effectively had two extra days of vacation, yesterday and today, but they didn’t really feel like vacation since I felt so bad for being an idiot and not setting up my work computers to accept remote connections in advance.
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The IKEA stuff I bought is so eager to become faulty that it started before I even finished setting it up. The dresser I bought was horribly damaged as it was delivered to my apartment, the screws for my dining table — despite my best efforts and aching hands — don’t fit their holes, and a finished surface of my dining table is cracked. I’ll have to return both items. I’m questioning now whether I should let them keep their stuff and go elsewhere for furniture.
apartment crack dining table dresser furniture ikea life reflections screws stories
1 minute
November 2008
I need to find a permanent place to live soon because Microsoft stops paying for my temporary housing on December 3. For a long time I thought I would look for a place to live in Eastside, probably Bellevue, because I don’t want to deal with the traffic crossing the Lake Washington bridges and I would be closer to work. Lately, after having worked for a couple weeks now, I realize that if I live in Eastside, it’s not as likely that I’ll have the energy or time to drive to Seattle to explore the city, which I really want to do.
apartments bellevue buses capitol hill commute eastside housing lake washington life microsoft permanent reflections seattle temporary traffic
2 minutes
There’s a condition that afflicts many innocent, hard-working people around the world every day. Its victims suffer from light sensitivity, disorientation, lethargy, sleep deprivation, and depression. There is no cure, but some drugs temporarily alleviate its symptoms. Many people manage to live somewhat normal lives through proper treatment. I’m referring, of course, to waking up before 9 AM, which I had to do all this week and expect to continue doing until my body gives out.
brian chapman colleagues development lead dwayne need functional programming life manager microsoft office office mate orientation reflections sleep stories varun puranik work
2 minutes
One reason I hesitated to move to Washington was because most of my friends and family are in California. I started college not knowing anyone, but joining a fraternity facilitated making friends and filled my schedule. Once again I’m faced with starting over, and I wonder if Microsoft will play that role of friend maker and schedule filler. I moved up here expecting only to know my aunt and uncle, who live in Sequim (pronounced squim for some reason); Dan, who was in my fraternity and works here full time now; and Tom, with whom I worked on a school project and who works at Microsoft too.
dan ellis friends life microsoft networking reflections stories tom bouldin
2 minutes
My apartment has a TV and cable, so I was able to watch the CNN and Daily Show coverage on Election Day. I had to watch it by myself, but I talked with Mom on the phone between McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s acceptance speech and talked with and texted Heather later in the night. I was so happy that Obama won! I couldn’t stop smiling. I was surprised at and pleased with how gracious McCain’s speech was, although I guess it’s no surprise he’d want to end on a good note, since he’ll have to work with Obama as a senator.
america cnn daily show election life mccain mom obama reflections south park
2 minutes
October 2008
I was reinstalling Windows for a friend the other day. After the installation, I upgraded everything. Service Pack 2 was giving me some trouble because every time I tried to install it, Windows would freeze half way through. I tried it two or three times before I decided to bring up the Task Manager to watch the processor load as the installer worked. Poof! Like a charm, the problem disappeared. Cooincidence?
freezing life reflections service pack task manager windows
1 minute
For a while I’ve thought that creating artificial intelligence would be straightforward. Regardless of whether the nature of human intelligence will ever be understood, eventually every detail of the physiology of the human brain will be discovered and known. Computers can know the current state of every atom in a brain and compute its next state, thereby simulating the brain. Computers don’t need to understand human intelligence to simulate it, they need only to simulate a brain, and intelligence will arise from that.
artificial intelligence computation computers concurrency ideas life reflections turing machines
2 minutes
I saw the movie Blindness this evening with Heather. The characters were believable, the pacing was good, the plot was somewhat unoriginal and obvious, and there were a couple great effects, although the whiteout effect is overused. It’s quite good overall. The main character annoyed me in the wards where she didn’t use her sight more to her advantage. How about just taking the gun from the leader when he’s not looking?
blindness life movie reflections review
2 minutes
September 2008
Recently a paragraph I had written was described as a “grievous offender.” It’s such a colorful phrase that I’m not even shamed by it.
feedback grievous life offender reflections thesis
1 minute
This Life Brought To You By Toyota
I went with Heather to Discovery Kingdom (formerly Marine World) in Vallejo last weekend. We had a lot of fun. They have several roller coasters in addition to the animal displays and shows that make for an entertaining time. I was surprised at how commercialized it was, though. There were ads everywhere you looked. It seemed like everything was sponsored or brought to us by companies other than Six Flags. They even interrupted the whale show for a thirty second Toyota commercial to play on the jumbo video screen!
animals commercials discovery kingdom life marine world reflections roller coasters six flags sponsors toyota vallejo
1 minute
Human Works As Phallic Symbols
From time to time I hear people characterize human works as phallic symbols, as if the single unifying motivation for the (assumed) men who created these things were their penises. Do people really buy into that kind of Freudian analysis? The more reasonable explanation, in my opinion, is that things worth constructing, like buildings, tools, and monuments, occupy volume and thus take up space, stand above ground, and are probably tall.
freud human life phallic phallus reflections symbolism symbols works
1 minute
Every word in a title should be capitalized. It’s an acceptable form of capitalization and it’s super easy to remember. I don’t understand why most people don’t do it that way. Otherwise you have to memorize all these exceptions for which words can and can’t be capitalized. Who can remember all of that? What about “in,” “to,” or “on?” It’s just not obvious. It’s like putting a comma after the second-to-last item in a list.
capitalization commas english life lists reflections titles
1 minute
Wordpress Question And Feature Request
I don’t understand the difference between categories and tags. Why can’t I just have tags? Having categories makes me try to come up with two dozen descriptive things that I could possibly write about. Tags I can come up with as I go. Also, where’s the automatic upgrade feature? Selective copying is not cool.
categories life reflections tags upgrading wordpress
1 minute
Windows has a way of getting under my skin that no other operating system can. It has a unique blend of interface freezing, printer problems, entropy, and slowdown. It drives me crazy. Actually, on the interface freezing, I’ve noticed that most major OS interfaces experience slow down. Is it so hard to give precedence to windows, widgets, and the mouse? Gah. I’m actually surprised more people haven’t caught onto the fact that life on Mac OS is simpler.
life operating system problems reflections slow windows
1 minute
August 2008
It’s been so great to be home these past few weeks. Before I came here I was working on my thesis every day, worrying about it, stressed out, cranky, crazy. That’s no way to live. For the first couple weeks back I didn’t really think about the work much and it was heaven. I can’t believe how much stress can take over your life and make you miserable. I should probably look into ways of dealing with my stress, because I was not going about it in a healthy way.
home life reflections stress thesis
2 minutes
July 2008
Apple Boss: Hey font guy, are you done yet so we can fire you? Apple Font Guy: Err…no! I still have to do the…um…Braille font! Yeah, and the…um…Cherokee font! I’ll get back to you.
apple braille cherokee fonts life reflections
1 minute
I’m going to puke if I read about “the cloud” or “cloud computing” one more time. It’s become popular in the past half year but it doesn’t describe anything new. Sometimes the computer tech industry has more ridiculous fads than fashion.
cloud computing fad life reflections
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June 2008
The SLO heat wave has thankfully faded away. I think it’s safe to remove my lemonade IV drip now. I don’t think I could have taken another day of 100+ degree heat. It’s terrible when it’s so hot you sweat without even moving. I envy Hawaiians, you can get away with walking around in your swim suit in public all day long without drawing strange looks. I’ve always favored hot weather over cold, but I guess it’s true that it’s easier to overcome cold than heat.
camping heat wave hot life reflections
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I’ve started learning a theorem proving tool to help me with my thesis. It’s called Coq, which has got to be the most unfortunate name I can think of. I think the creators are French, and coq means cock, as in rooster, in French. Why rooster? I have no idea. Why does anyone name anything what they do? I wonder which seemingly-innocent English words mean something equally awkward in other languages?
coq english french life reflections thesis
1 minute
I saw The Incredible Hulk tonight and it was pretty much what I expected: light on story, heavy on action. The action scenes looked great, especially the scene on a campus. The end action scene looked too CGI-ish and I kept noticing it. I was looking forward to seeing another movie with Edward Norton in it since he’s usually good (Fight Club!), but he seemed kind of wasted on this movie.
domain names edward norton life movie reflections the incredible hulk
1 minute
Battlestar Galactica is the best TV show I watch right now. It never fails to entertain. God I love that show. The mid-season finale had an incredible ending. I think it’s a better show than Lost, even though I consider Lost my favorite show. BSG is a remake of a TV show made decades ago, but they completely transformed it. The writing is incredible. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
battlestar galactica finale life reflections show tv
1 minute
From Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs: In a similar way, we can regard the evaluator as a very special machine that takes as input a description of a machine. Given this input, the evaluator configures itself to emulate the machine described. For example, if we feed our evaluator the definition of factorial, the evaluator will be able to compute factorials. From this perspective, our evaluator is seen to be a universal machine.
life lisp reflections universal machine
1 minute
I can’t believe graduation came and went already, it all happened so fast. I was so focused on my thesis work that I barely lifted my head to watch the date approach. It’s weird to go through the ceremony and celebrate with friends and family knowing that I’m not really done, that there’s more work to do. But I feel close, I think there’s only a few weeks left before I’m done.
graduation kung fu panda life michelle lee movie reflections
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April 2008
Some people like to work on their computers with the lights off, and I can’t for the life of me understand why or come to like it. You can’t very well see the keyboard, your desk, or anything really. You have to squint into a bright light bulb for hours at a time, which I’ve heard isn’t good for your eyes, and it doesn’t seem to actually make the monitor easier to look at.
dark life lights office reflections
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When a TV show loses an actor or actress, the writers have to replace their character with a new one and make sure it’s all consistent with the plot. This takes valuable time away from what could have otherwise been a kick-ass space battle. I’d be too impatient to artfully work around a change in cast. I wonder if you could get away with doing a half-assed job of replacing the actor or actress but essentially keep the character the same.
actor actress kick-ass space battle life plot reflections tv
1 minute
It’s a shame how much software is rewritten all the time. Incompatibilities of language, interface, and execution platform and the proprietary nature of most software development seem to have doomed us to forever reinvent the software wheel. The number of linked list implementations out there must be staggering. In a perfect world, someone would decide a linked list would be a nice thing and implement it, and then everyone else would use that one implementation from then on.
incompatibility interoperability life modularity reflections reuse software
1 minute
Damn this San Luis Obispo weather! It’s always stabbing me in the back. It was supposed to be 65 degrees today, it’s actually 61 degrees right now, but I’m hot as hell in these pants, shoes, and long-sleeved shirt. I can’t win.
cold hot life reflections uncomfortable weather
1 minute
March 2008
I bought the Nintendo Wii game Super Mario Galaxy when it was released and I’ve almost finished it (ten stars left to get). It’s a superb game, with beautifully-executed graphics, sound, game play, and level design (IGN gave it 9.7/10). It’s the best game on Wii right now and I’d recommend it to anyone who liked other Mario games or wants to see the Wii controls done right. However, it does have a couple faults.
camera level design life nintendo reflections review super mario galaxy wii
3 minutes
This year is the first time I’ve been in charge of paying an electricity bill. Even though the bill is split four ways, I alone seem to go out of my way to turn off unused lights and electronics. I don’t go so far as patrolling the halls, but sometimes I feel like you could stand outside and see where I am in the house by the windows that go dark.
electricity bill life pay reflections
1 minute
I gave a fifty-minute lecture on the lambda calculus for a class last week. It was a topic I understood very well, but had never taught to someone else before. The length of the lecture was daunting enough, but I was surprised at how difficult it was to create a lesson plan. I could clearly see the ideas and their implications in my mind’s eye, but it was hard to impose an order and a rationale on them that would make sense from the perspective of someone new to the material.
hard lambda calculus life reflections teachers teaching
1 minute
February 2008
Your Phone Conversation Annoys Me
When I answer the phone, I usually move into another room for privacy and so I won’t distract others. This seems natural and reasonable to me. I talk in a normal tone and no one has ever complained that they couldn’t hear me. Others seem to either think differently or don’t realize they’re being obnoxious. They’ll sit right next to me and carry on their one-sided conversations at a heightened volume.
annoying conversation life phone reflections rude
1 minute
Rasmus Lerdorf, the inventor of the programming language PHP, came to Cal Poly yesterday to give a two-hour lecture on PHP and related web technologies. I didn’t know anything about him, but I was pleased to find he’s a very intelligent, pragmatic, and humorous person. He spoke at length about the transition of PHP into an open source project, the evolution of the language, and some security and performance topics that I found very interesting.
cal poly javascript languages life php programming rasmus lerdorf reflections web yahoo yui
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January 2008
I see backticks (`) used quite frequently as an opening quotation mark online and in program output, as in “You named it `Carl’ “. Is this some kind of quiet leet development that people don’t talk about but just pick up, like slang?
backticks latex leet life quoting reflections
1 minute
LaTeX is a tool used almost exclusively for formatting academic Computer Science papers. Instead of formatting your paper through traditional what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) means, LaTeX is a markup language that is interpreted and formatted for you. For example, instead of highlighting a word and clicking a bold button to make the font bold, e.g. bold, you embed a markup notation that is transformed into the intended formatting at the end, e.g. \textbf{bold}.
bad documents latex life reflections wysiwyg
2 minutes
James Koman recently wrote an opinion article in the Mustang Daily, the student newspaper of Cal Poly, entitled Why I hate white people. The article contains very racist and ignorant thoughts about white people, in case you couldn’t tell from the title. The newspaper was flooded with protesting letters to the editor in the following days. I just read the article and found the last sentence amusing, which is ironic since the rest of the article wasn’t:
cal poly ignorant james koman life mustang daily quotations racist reflections
1 minute
December 2007
It seems to me that large wildfires like that of southern California are unavoidable. I’m not an expert, but it’s my understanding that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that play a useful role in the life cycle of the environment. They can clear out thick underbrush and smaller trees that can come to choke larger trees and in doing so they enrich the soil with the ashes they leave behind. In fact, Yellowstone has a policy of letting small natural fires burn freely because its management recognizes these benefits.
california containment ideas life reflections underbrush wildfires yellowstone
2 minutes
Damn it! I was just sitting here, watching the end of Return of the Jedi on TV. You know, the party on Endor after the big climax where the music plays and they’re all dancing and hugging. They changed the ending! The music was much quieter and less energetic and they now have that dude who plays Anakin in Episodes 1-3 standing there as a ghost instead of the older version of himself.
anakin bad changed ending george lucas ghost life music reflections south park star wars
1 minute
November 2007
I’ve been doing a lot of Java development with Eclipse this past quarter and this past summer. Eclipse has a really neat code formatting tool that you can kick off with a quick Ctrl-Shift-F or Command-F to tidy up your code. When I use Eclipse, I regularly format my code along with saving it. Now I find myself reaching for the format shortcut when I write for my fiction writing class.
eclipse format java life reflections
1 minute
I finished the game Portal a little while ago. I think it’s one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. The game play is very original and exciting and offers many opportunities to stump us with environmental puzzles and brain teasers. But on top of that, the writers have infused it with a sense of humor I’ve never seen before in a game that totally works. At times it’s subtle and at other times it’s hilarious.
game half-life 2 life portal reflections review valve
3 minutes
October 2007
Congress is concerned that peer-to-peer networks may make users susceptible to identity theft. Apparently, some users share their sensitive information with others and then get upset when their identities are stolen. That’s Darwin at his finest, in my opinion. Why does Congress have to fix things that aren’t broken? Users have to explicitly choose to publish files to the network, be it the web or a peer-to-peer network. What the peer-to-peer program shares by default is irrelevant; the burden is on the user to understand what they’re doing.
bittorrent congress identity theft internet life p2p reflections
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