Twitter for Week of 12 October 2008
These are my annotated tweets for the week of 12 October 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
HONK! Festival
2008-10-12: HONK! festival was a huge success yesterday. Today’s parade from Davis Square to Harvard Square starts at noon. http://www.honkfest.org/
2008-10-12: The HONK! Festival parade today reclaimed the streets for horns, bikes, and feet. A good crowd followed the parade down Mass. Ave.
I wish I knew how to play a musical instrument, so I could participate.
The Rock Rats, by Ben Bova
2008-10-12: Another audio book from audible.com finished: The Rock Rats (The Asteroid Wars, Part 2), by Ben Bova. Excellent production, good story.
Ben Bova’s novels contain lots of interesting ideas and pretty good characters. The audio books make them even better, because they use multiple readers. This gives the listener a better sense of the different characters.
Columbus Day
2008-10-13: Today is Columbus Day in the United States — probably our most stupid holiday — celebrating a man who didn’t know what he’d found.
Code Documentation
2008-10-13: I struggled all day with badly-documented code. I just cannot figure out how some things are done. It might be faster to rewrite the code.
It’s a dilemma whether to use the existing code or write new code. Sometimes there is no good answer, but there is always pain.
New MacBook Pro Models
2008-10-14: I’m disappointed by the new MacBook Pros. I consider the new keyboard and the glossy screen two steps backward. I have no urge to buy.
2008-10-16: We’re going to the Apple store on Boylston tomorrow evening to test the new MacBook Pro. If we don’t like it, we’ll order the old model.
2008-10-17: We’re back from looking at the new MacBook Pros. The keyboard is better than I thought, but we dislike the glossy screen.
The glossy screen becomes an ergonomics issue when the user has to cope with bright reflections. It is disappointing how sometimes Apple makes a bad decision based solely on design and Steve Jobs’s whims.
Group Meeting
2008-10-17: I stayed up until 1:00 am last night working on a presentation I gave at group meeting today. Presentation provoked lots of discussion.
2008-10-17: I was so tired, I fell asleep on the sofa at 8:30 pm while reading Anathem. It wasn’t the book that made me sleepy, it was lack of sleep.
It’s disappointing that sometimes I have to work so hard that I don’t have time for my personal life.
Ringo Starr
2008-10-17: I dreamed last night that Ringo Starr was playing drums brilliantly, dynamically, in a live show. When I woke up, I burst out laughing.
My father plays drums and my brother plays drums, so I know what good drumming sounds like. Ringo plays adequate drums on many early Beatles tunes, but his later work is abysmal.
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
2008-10-18: I’ve devoted my day to reading Anathem. Stephenson has created a new world — not as rich and complex as, say, Dune, but very good.
I’m really enjoying this book, and I’m so emotionally involved that it brought me to tears in a couple of places.
October 19 2008 04:43 pm | Microblog
