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Archive for August 22nd, 2004

Linksomnia

Sunday, August 22nd, 2004

I knew I wouldn’t be tired the night before classes start. I avoided coffee and everything! I don’t even have any classes meeting tomorrow, and I’m still wired. So, some late-night links for you, taken from bOING bOING: The enthralling, disturbing tale of the great Eve Online in-game scam; the NY Times’ diagram of links from Karl Rove to the Swift Veterans for “Truth”; the undulating figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” heard to say, “omg i been 0wn3d”. (This is actually quite sad: it is likely that the unfenceable painting will simply be destroyed over unpaid ransom.)

Unrelated: Anyone have any recommendations for an accessible microeconomics textbook or essay collection? I continue to believe that exposure to econ will help me in my future research, but before I commit to an actual course I really need to be sure I can stick with it at that level (or if I should just stick to the “I read a great article” dinner-conversation level).

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What to do with pyblosxom?

Sunday, August 22nd, 2004

What to do with pyblosxom? From the maintainer: “I’m not sure what to do. I can’t really take on another project and push it through the motions.”

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pdftk

Sunday, August 22nd, 2004

“If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses.”

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Equipment.

Sunday, August 22nd, 2004

Hey, look, there’s my office.

Midnight update: I guess what I wanted to say here was that, during this past week of vacation and orientation, the termination of my employment has only partially committed itself to my brain.

Sure, I’d erased my files and turned off my computers, but there they remained, on the desk in my office, quietly waiting to go back to work. Daily I walked past that room (marked “DINING” on floor plans of our lovely house), and each time I resisted the unconscious urge to veer into my Big Black Office Chair and check email/IRC/IM/feeds/Perforce.

But now I’ve gone and disassembled my office equipment (as you can see in the photo) and as Johnny Five will tell you, this means it’s finally really dead. After I hand it all over (to the other member of my previous employer’s Houston cell), I’ll go about taking apart the other apparatus of my bunker for the last year and a half: The wires, the paper trays, the boxes of files and boxes of boxes, the unusual makeshift desk. It probably won’t look like a dining room while we live here, but it certainly won’t be my office anymore either.

So now where am I supposed to do my tinkering?

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