Blogging is hard

It seems to happen to most people. They feel that they have something to share, or an event they want to record. So they start up a blog. Perhaps a couple friends read it, maybe a couple of strangers. Either way, readership is low, commenting is almost non-existent. The time between posts gets longer and longer. Then the silence. The blog is dead.

Blogging is hard. Especially when you receive almost zero feedback. So most blogs die. It's almost like watching some kind of survival of the fittest. I just have no idea what the criteria for "fittest" would be on the internet. Probably "lack of hobbies in the real world".

I'm glad that I've kept blogging. The only way that I've done it is that I blog for me. That way, I get instant feedback (whoa, that was a dumb thing to post!) and I know I have a consistent readership. I think that if you blog for anyone else, or if you think / hope that someone else is interested in what you have to say on the internet, you'll probably be disappointed. Not because no one cares, but because you won't know it.

Blogging. Party of one.

Measuring is boring

I love to cook. Baking, I love to eat. Not so much on the preparing part though. All cooking and baking is just chemistry, but baking is usually a lot less forgiving for any errors. And there's one thing that I don't like doing, it's measuring. It seems to drain the creativity from the process. Removes the flair, and I love flair. As I'm sure that you can imagine, if you don't measure carefully when baking, you end up with crap. But I still try to get away with it sometimes. ;-P

Set a course... for the Susan System

I keep on coming back to the The Fullness Of Time Penny Arcade comic from around mother's day. I'm sure that some things from "now" will ripple throughout time while others are washed away like a sandcastle with the next wave. And there's probably not really any way to know which way it'll be.

I like stories / ideas like that. A good one is the (false) story about space shuttle's rocket boosters size being based on the size of an Imperial Roman war chariot. Unintended, and impossible to predict, consequences. Another story, or poem in this case, is Ozymandias. My favourite part being "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".

It's probably healthier to assume that everything we do in life will be eventually washed away with the waves of time. You just have to think about how long you want your sandcastle to be in the sand before it's gone, because this too will pass.

Milestones - 6 months or 5 years

Today Alice is six months old. I didn't think that I'd be counting half birthdays, but I am. I feel like we should have some cake or something for, well, us, to celebrate. It's not been the most difficult 6 months compared to talking to other parents, but I feel that we've accomplished something. And we are still sane. Well, as sane as before, which isn't saying too much. But it's something.

We are also coming up on our fifth anniversary. I find it hard to believe that it's been that long. Time has just flew by. Unlike with the baby, I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment - it has not felt like work. Marriage (for me) has felt more like breathing. Natural. Rhythmic. Hard to imagine anything else.

I guess that means that it was the right thing to have done. At least that's what my wife tells me to say. :-P

Don't change the url

One of my recent pet peeves is sites that are using different url based on the user agent (UA). It just seems lazy, and when you share a link, someone is just looking at the wrong site.

When in doubt, give me the "desktop" or full version. But if you detect a mobile UA, give me different css / layout. Don't redirect me to a different domain like m.example.com or add in crap like /touch/ into the url. Of course allow me to switch back to the desktop version if you've hidden something.

With each new tech we go through a shitty period where people provide different solutions that don't work well until, slowly, everyone converges to the best one. I just hope that this shitty period is shorter than others have been. :-/

Embrace change... at 3 am

Before our baby came along, we were warned many times "as soon as you think that you've got it figured out, they change it!". Since so many people said this, I just have operated under the assumption that anything that I figure out probably won't work tomorrow.

We've been extremely lucky because Alice started to sleep through the night quite early on. She would occasionally wake up, babble for a bit or cry once or twice, then fall back asleep. Lately she's decided that it's good to wake up, and stay up, at 3 am. And then sometimes 5 am. I am not amused. I don't even get the worst of it - I change her and try to settle her down, but she just wants a meal so that falls on Laura. I hope that this is just a growth spurt which is what just about any change in routine seems to be blamed on. I'm just really glad (again) that we're both off and can deal with this together, without having to get up early for work.

An alternate title for this post could have been "Embrace. Change. Feed. At 3 am"

A Long Weekend

On this long weekend a lot of people are going away and doing it special. For me, the last several months have felt like a really long weekend. It's been great. However with a weekend, you feel that since it's just so short you must do something or it will be lost. Being on "family leave" has seemed to removed that deadline.

I usually do much better when I have a deadline.

I feel that somehow we're wasting this beautiful weekend. It doesn't make sense because next Wednesday (for instance) would be about the same as today. Maybe it's just been ingrained into me to "do something" on long weekend.

Dying a slow death: a tale of our "tough" camera

Late in 2009 we bought a new camera: a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1. I have to say that I'm fairly disappointed right now with it.

Right from the beginning the flash was a bit too aggressive and harsh, but that's something that we could live with. Then we figured that it was difficult to take the video's off it because it stored it in a proprietary that needed special software to convert them into something useful. The only thing that we had that would do that was the iMovie '09 that was on my wife's computer. A major PITA. But still, we worked around it.

Now the "select" button in the middle of d-pad doesn't work. Super annoying, but it's still possible to deal with that (partially). Except I turned it on and the screen seems to be failing. [insert expletives here]. Laura pointed out that it's ironic that the dslr that we've had longer and put through the same crap (minus the swimming) has held out better. And has a better warranty. In fact, my 18-55 mm lens just started to act up, so Nikon replaced it. Cost to me: zero.

It pisses me off that something that's marketed as "durable" has not been. Not compared to something that I'd put more into the "fragile" camp. Would I buy another "tough" camera? Probably, if only for taking to the beach / swimming on vacations. But not from Panasonic.

What the future holds

It's funny trying to figure out where we will live in 5 years. What our needs will be. How much support our parents will need. Looking that far ahead feels like being in the midst of a very thick fog: can't see anything and I'm not quite sure how I got here.

Where will we live? What jobs will we have? What will our child (children??) be like? Will we have all survived the robotic uprising of the mid-teens? People act like they have it all figured out and are following some 10 or 20 year plan perfectly, but I'm sure that they are all just making it up as they go along. Just like us.

Jim's Addiction

One of the things that I've figured out is that I've got a problem. A drinking problem. Specially hot beverages. Coffee and Earl Grey being my key weaknesses. But really, it doesn't matter exactly what I'm drinking. When at work I try to keep water in front of me and constantly be surprised when my thermos ran empty.

It's even worse at times like now when I'm sick. It's nothing serious, just Man Cold Level 1, or as I'll refer to it: MCL1. It's funny, but I can't find any formal literature about Man Cold Levels. I would have thought that it would have been documented and discussed like the Fujita scale or DEFCON. Ah well. Time for another cup of tea.

QotD - Stupid people

Think how stupid the average person is. Then remember that half the population are more stupid than that.
- George Carlin

Whilst

One of the funny (to my mind) things when we traveled to Australia was that it was quite common for people to use the word "whilst". At first I thought that it was people trying to be funny, or as my sister would say "adding funk". But it kept on popping up, both in writing and in speech. Yes, people actually used "whilst" in conversations or when making announcements. Now Laura is actually one of those people too. Funny.