Dear Al Gore:

We still haven't shown people that global warming matters to them in a real, present way. And they're not going to take action until it gets bumped a little higher on their subconscious priority list.

Let's make a cartoon short, showing the changing of the seasons in 100 or 200 years. Maybe there are some trees that stay fixed throughout the cartoon, and we start with fall when they drop their leaves quickly. Then there's a wet, sloppy winter with occasional deep freeze spells. Spring rolls around and there's some chirping of birds and little green sprouts sprouting. And then summer arrives, with the distorted optics of heat from the oven, and burning, screaming children running by.

It's a little grotesque, but you can do that in cartoons - Southpark has demonstrated that.

Irony

Look for a blog post about this
Originally uploaded by AlexEagle

I was opening this DVD late one night, and as you might expect, I was very excited to see Owen Wilson in a war movie. Turned out to be an awesome movie.

The packaging, on the other hand, was un-awesome. I don't open a lot of DVDs, since the movie fairy drops things in my computer from time to time. The amount of work I am forced to do, just to open something I purchased, is insane. The cellophane is shrunk-wrapped in such a way that there's no handhold to get the tearing process started. Then, these serious stickers are on THREE sides of the case before it can be opened.

So, the irony is that the security device is "enclosed". Is stealing DVD's really such a giant problem? It's hard to imagine that I could open all this packaging in less than 3 minutes and steal the disc out of it. Maybe the enclosed security device is an RFID that can get picked up at the front door.

But, just like the classic joke about the best contraception for trumpet players*, what this DVD packaging really does is make me less likely to buy something so unpleasant to own. Even once I get this disc in the player, I'll have to wait for whatever junk at the beginning that's flagged as "non-fast-forward-or-jump-to-menu-able". When you compare this experience to my alternative, it's just silly that someone would pay more for something of significantly less value.

* (their personalities)

Professional blog

Since I post so frequently (once every four months?), I think I need to start a second blog.

Actually, it's just that computer people need blogs lately as a sort of networking tool. I mean networking in the people-sense, except that in this case we do it online. Like an online-form of networking. And everyone knows that you have to have a different online presence for each role of your life. Which is complicated... I am so overwhelmed all the time.

Also, I'm feeling peer pressure like in the days of LiveJournal to blog more, so maybe I will. Once I have the new one looking ok, I'll divulge where it is.

Adium 1.0 is out today!

What a great feeling - I see a notification from a feed that Adium 0.89.1 is out - and I end up getting Adium 1.0 from the site! It says it was released today... they haven't even updated the changelog yet. Sweet.

Learning Ruby

Thanks to a lightning crash-course from Gabe, and some magical tools, I am getting started on Ruby on Rails. On a Mac, apparently Locomotive plue TextMate, plus the code generation tools that come with RoR, basically write the application themselves. Getting an app up and running not just from scratch, but from knowing absolutely nothing about what you're doing, in about five minutes... it feels like magic.

Getting things done

I'm kind of excited at the moment about this GTD productivity methodology. So far I have been much more successful at accomplishing things, the sort of things I would have left for "later" previously. I've only read the first part of Allen's book, with some of the theory, and am starting into the mechanics of the system now.

The problem is that it's easy to be productive and stick to a new regime while it's new and exciting. I'm reminded of the Hawthorne Effect which suggests that any change to your working environment can make you more productive, regardless of the change. Perhaps this means that if my productivity goes down, I should just stop doing GTD, and it will go back up!

No, first try what the expert says, then make up something stupid. Not the other way around. Have to remember that...

I'm back

I suffered a miserable failure when I tried to embed a picture of the Jimmy Dean microwaveable chocolate-chip pancake-based pigs in a blanket ona stick, the worlds greatest late nite munchie food. I dragged it into my blogger dashboard widget, and it appeared in that view, but I was expecting a little too much for it to html that up to the original location of the image...

I'm trying GTD ("Getting things done", a book by David Allen) lately - see 43 Folders. We'll see if I get more things done. One of them might be blogging more, who knows?