I'm going to a conference for a week in Utah. It'll be my first time in Park City, and my second time in Salt Lake City. Here's a map of downtown SLC, color-coded to emphasize the insanity:
**worst. planning. ever. ** (...and I don't buy their propagnda - next to the green arrow on the map above, you could be on N W Temple, between W N Temple and W S Temple [or is it E S Temple?])
permalinkSo I've finally gotten a new phone and my camera that had been flakey for the last year decided to start working properly again - and I am happy with technology! In celebration I decided to take some pictures of my room (messy edition)
I imported these pictures using F-Spot, which has a decent tagging interface that I should make use of to catalogue a bunch of old photos. F-Spot also happily resized and exported them to Flickr, tags and all (other stuff also supported). Hopefully this also means I'll start taking pictures again.
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I-house is a pretty fun place to live (I'm off on the right side).
P.S. Ñ Ð½Ð°Ñтупающим Ñтарым новым годом! happy old new year!
permalink... please date your software releases ... I've been trying out a lot of new software lately, and it's the most frustrating thing in the world to not be able to figure out WHEN a particular version came out.
Sure, there's a changelog that tells me all the neat bug fixes from the last version, but what good does that do me if I can't tell whether the software was last updated 8 years ago or 8 days ago? It's such a simple thing, but I can't believe at the number of projects out there that have no mention of release dates on their website.
... changing topics... Anyone have a gui svn client they particularly like? I've started playing with eSvn (0.7.0 testing version), it's clean and simple (someone else came to the same conclusion). It looks like this: 
Subcommander has a neat looking log graph (bottom), and kdesvn has a history browser, anyone use stuff like that?
I've also tried subclipse. Yep, I finally bit the bullet and started trying Eclipse and other GUI stuff, like Inisght (gdb gui), although I continue to live in Vim (which has an CVS/SVN integration plugin I've found useful)
permalinkSo I used to go to the Super Crown by my house all the time when I was in high school. It became sort of a ritual for me, whenever I was feeling in the dumps, not getting any work done, or just needed a break and a walk to refresh my mind, I'd head out, usually around 9 o'clock at night, and spend a few hours sitting on their comfortable couch seats (or on the floor, when those were occupied) reading the first few chapters of some book, usually technologically related. The only one I remember finishing entirely at Crown, in several visits, was ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, though I know I peeked into a bunch of others on telecommunications, AI, Unix, CS, etc. My thinking was that it's good to expose myself to just a little bit of a something that I didn't know anything about, and I'd walk away refreshed by the new knowledge. I treated the bookstore as a library (incidentally, the French word for bookstore is librairie, so you can't blame me there), and even took little notes of the things I had learned along the way, in part so that I could return to the page I read up to the previous time. I bought books, there, too, when I had the cash - Cliff Stoll, Steven Levy, Robert Pirsig, Daniel Quinn, Tim Berners-Lee, many others, too; I usually keep the receipt in the book (and would write the same sorts of notes on the receipts).
It became a really familiar place, the same classical music, the same new book smells. I never really had to talk to anyone, or say anything, so it very much became a place where I could go and clear my head, just sort of process my thoughts. Then it went out of business and closed, which really made me sad. Luckily, Tower Books, nearby, had just started operating, and though it didn't have as large of a selection, I migrated over there, and got used to the music, atmosphere, and the staff there. So Tower, too, became familiar with time, and they were open till midnight, which suited my fancy more. Going down there at night became a ritual, whenever I was feeling uninspired, I'd just head over to there and immerse myself in some new book, if only for a few hours. I think I'm kind of different that way. If you've ever been in a bookstore with me, you'll know that I always want to stick around for a while, even though I usually have no specific book in mind, I just like to go and sit and read something new for a while. For example, I always like to drop by Borders whenever I'm on University in Palo Alto, but also usually overlook that whoever it is that I'm with, whether it's Elaine, or Philip, or Jon, doesn't have the same approach to visiting bookstores.
Cody's Books on Telegraph closed earlier this year, though Moe's is still around. Now Tower's closing up shop, I just walked around the all of the empty shelves and saw very few books that'd be of any interest to me. Ended up picking up two DVDs: Before Stonewall, and Брат (Brother) for $6 each. It's really makes me uncomfortable and sad knowing that I won't have that little place to escape to, anymore. I'm not a big fan of changes like these.
permalinkSentence long update on life: I'm at Berkeley studying Vision Science now.
I've started getting involved with the (currently small) Campus Greens organization (which meets Mondays at 7:10 in 200 Wheeler).
So today I heard Todd Chretien, Green senatorial candidate speak to a group of about 30 as part of the ASUC Speaker Series. Todd titled his talk "Why Students Should Never, Ever Vote for the Democrats," which I think is somewhat unfortunate. Todd has an eloquent platform and I share a lot of the same views, but I also think that the title incites the type of reaction that eliminates any possibility for reasonable discussion or discourse.
I think that people don't want to listen to you if you insult them, or just say something shocking - the novelty (if any) quickly wears off (it's taken me a while to figure this out, but I think I learned the difficulty in trying to actively engage those who support the Democrats when talking (ranting?) to Janet on the streets of Brussels over the summer).
I think that we need more boring nitty-gritty politics, because no one will hand over the helm to people with big ideas (even if they are the right ideas). The big picture is important, but it has to be negotiated with real, tangible, local progress.
Todd gave a short run through of his top three issues ( war in Iraq, education, the two party system), and then opened it up for Q & A. In answering the questions, he covered a lot of ground in both domestic and foreign policy, but I felt like it was a discussion of issues larger than those someone who admitted he had no chance of winning could hope to influence....
So as the last question for the night, after expressing these sentiments I asked what we could do locally, that's within our power, mentioning current choice voting efforts in Davis and Oakland. Unfortunately, Todd stuck to his anti-war protest-in-the-streets approach (even taking an outlandish pot shot at proportional representation by mentioning something about Hitler getting elected).
Most of my life I, too, have been a big ideas person, but I can't say I've accomplished much with them, which is why I'm trying something new...
By the way, Kenji and Philip, you continued work on important matters has been really inspiring.Here's my letter to the editor regarding choice voting that never got printed in the Davis Enterprise:
Until I came to UC Davis, I had never realized that there could be different voting systems. Choice voting is a way of reaching a majority (greater than 50%) consensus.
Choice voting allows everyone to vote their conscience without the fear of having your vote "wasted." After the polls close, if your top-ranked candidate, Alice, has the least amount of votes, she is eliminated and your vote transfers to your next choice, Bob, in your order of preference. This process ("instant run-off") continues until candidates reach enough votes to be elected (the threshold). This consensus building mechanism ensures that the elected officials will represent the greatest possible proportion of the voters.
Contrast this with the current system: candidate Mallory and Minnie, representing a minority of the population could get elected when multiple similar candidates (Alice, Bob, Chris, and Debra) representing the viewpoints of the majority of the population split the vote between one other.
This would not happen under choice voting, because when Alice is eliminated, those votes would go to the next choices of her supporters. This would provide more votes for the remaining majority candidates, ensuring that one of them gets elected.
I encourage Davis voters to vote yes on Measure L this November so that the City can continue looking into this effective system.
Paul Ivanov UC Davis Class of 2005
(cute choice voting promotional video)
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