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A short State of the Karl
Apr. 27th, 2007 04:07 am(Had my first experience with LJ eating posts earlier. Bleah. And as always, I'm convinced that post was more articulate and sense-making than this one will be.)
Briefly, I've been a bit of a hermit lately. If I owe you correpondence of some sort, typed or otherwise, I apologise. I'm moving around in a bit of a fog, and I don't have much idea of when it will lift.
I'm information-grazing, which is a good thing except when it isn't. Everyone has their ideal balance between reading and writing; mine has been tilted way over to the "reading" end of the scale for months now. I've been trying my best to "show up to the page," but it feels like I've spent weeks staring at empty editor buffers and browser text boxes. Coding isn't any easier than writing prose; my brain just seems sluggish in general.
About the state of the world, I have only two things to say: Canada is looking more like the U.S. every day, and not in a good way. And Venezuela, for which I had such high hopes, is showing distinct signs of authoritarianism. We get entirely enough of that tendency here in the land of the nominally free; if Mr Chavez is determined to be an alternative to American-hegemony-as-usual, couldn't he find a better way to show the contrast than by vigourously suppressing dissenting views? People will start to think that politicians everywhere are just out to keep power for as long as they can, and that way lies complacency and ruin.
About computers, software, and their ilk: Do I stick with the old tools (Tcl, Expect, OpenACS, text-only Web browsing, awk, sed, Emacs, C when absolutely necessary for speed, Lisp when dealing with large systems) because my brain is old and calcified, or because the new tools (Ruby, Rails, Python, Twisted, Zope, C++ as a 'system language,' ubiquitous JavaScript, and the behemoths: Java and Eclipse) are all part of the endless recapitulation of an industry that feels compelled to re-invent itself every decade at the very least? Every time I learn a new language, it feels like I'm going over and over the same old already-solved problems.
About people and relationships: Why is it that so many people seem to think that the surest way to make themselves feel better is to make someone else feel worse? I've been pondering that one for at least thirty years, and I'm quite sure I'm no closer to an answer.
If you're reading this, the odds are good that I love you. Please be so good as to treat yourself accordingly.
Briefly, I've been a bit of a hermit lately. If I owe you correpondence of some sort, typed or otherwise, I apologise. I'm moving around in a bit of a fog, and I don't have much idea of when it will lift.
I'm information-grazing, which is a good thing except when it isn't. Everyone has their ideal balance between reading and writing; mine has been tilted way over to the "reading" end of the scale for months now. I've been trying my best to "show up to the page," but it feels like I've spent weeks staring at empty editor buffers and browser text boxes. Coding isn't any easier than writing prose; my brain just seems sluggish in general.
About the state of the world, I have only two things to say: Canada is looking more like the U.S. every day, and not in a good way. And Venezuela, for which I had such high hopes, is showing distinct signs of authoritarianism. We get entirely enough of that tendency here in the land of the nominally free; if Mr Chavez is determined to be an alternative to American-hegemony-as-usual, couldn't he find a better way to show the contrast than by vigourously suppressing dissenting views? People will start to think that politicians everywhere are just out to keep power for as long as they can, and that way lies complacency and ruin.
About computers, software, and their ilk: Do I stick with the old tools (Tcl, Expect, OpenACS, text-only Web browsing, awk, sed, Emacs, C when absolutely necessary for speed, Lisp when dealing with large systems) because my brain is old and calcified, or because the new tools (Ruby, Rails, Python, Twisted, Zope, C++ as a 'system language,' ubiquitous JavaScript, and the behemoths: Java and Eclipse) are all part of the endless recapitulation of an industry that feels compelled to re-invent itself every decade at the very least? Every time I learn a new language, it feels like I'm going over and over the same old already-solved problems.
About people and relationships: Why is it that so many people seem to think that the surest way to make themselves feel better is to make someone else feel worse? I've been pondering that one for at least thirty years, and I'm quite sure I'm no closer to an answer.
If you're reading this, the odds are good that I love you. Please be so good as to treat yourself accordingly.