This blog is being discontinued until further notice.

I’ve never done a really good job of keeping it up, and I think the problem is only going to get worse next year when I start college. It’s also fairly pointless, as so few people read it. Few readers means few comments, and little motivation to update. I have a livejournal that I am much better about updating, and that will continue. My books page will also be updated, and the blog archives will be here. The website isn’t going away, it’s just going to sleep for the most part.

I’m trying to streamline my life in preparation for college in order to leave maximum time for schoolwork and friends. I don’t want to be spending tons of time on my computer next year. I want to be out talking to people and doing things.

I’ve enjoyed writing and designing for this site, but it just feels like it’s over. The reason this design is still up is that every time I try to work on a new one, I lose motivation and can’t seem to create anything I’m happy with. I don’t believe in continuing hobbies after they’ve ceased to be enjoyable, which this has.

So, goodbye. It’s been cool.

Everything’s been going well with the new computer. I’m having a bit of a web design block, maybe brought on by the lethargy of summer. That’s why this site hasn’t been redone yet. I need a design that doesn’t need to be pixel-perfect. I want it to be decent-looking in all browsers, and this one definitely isn’t. I’m working on it.

Anyway, here are some programs nice programs I’m using on my PowerBook:

• Chat Client - Adium: I used Trillian on my old Windows computer, and this almost seems like Trillian for Mac. It’s a very nice multi-protocal (AIM/Yahoo/MSN/whatever you want) that has some extra features. I haven’t actually tried iChat, the Mac chat client that comes packaged with OS X, so I can’t compare, but I like Adium very much.
• FTP Client - Cyberduck: I originally downloaded Fugu, but never got it to connect to my FTP server. Cyberduck connected just fine, so Cyberduck it is! I don’t do a lot of fancy FTP stuff, I just need something that’ll let me upload things and fool around with CHMOD.
• Image/Photo Editing - The GIMP: The GIMP is the open source equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. It’s available for OS X, Windows, and Linux. Documentation for OS X users isn’t very good, but I’ve managed. It’s a great program, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it can do.
• Color Chooser - iColors: I LOVE THIS PROGRAM. Maybe it’s that I’ve never used a decent color picker before, or maybe this program really is as cool as I think it is. It can grab colors from anywhere on your screen, and save them in a menu over to the side. And it’s very, very simple and easy to use. No bloat at all. If you need a color picker, I definitely recommend it.
• Text Editor - SubEthaEdit: A basic text editor that I use for coding CSS and HTML and such. It’s very simple, but has automatic tabbing and syntax highlighting for about a million different languages. While I would appreciated CSS auto-completion, I dont need it. SubEthaEdit also has a lot of features intended for files that are being edited by more than over person.

I am now the proud owner of a 12″ PowerBook. I love it beyond belief. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever owned.

I was originally planning to get an iBook, either the 12″ or 14″. When I visited the Apple Store yesterday, I liked the 12″ model much better than the 14″. The 14″ looked big and clunky andd ugly, but the 12″ was cute and perfect. I initially dismissed the PowerBook because of cost, but the 12″ isn’t actually very expensive. It ended up costing less than the 14″ iBook would have, mostly because I wanted to add more RAM and disk space to the iBook, but the PowerBook’s standard configuration was good enough. And with my student discount, it only cost an additional $100 to upgrade to the superdrive (which gives one the ability to burn DVD’s) and get an extra 20 GB of space.

Here is it, because it gives me joy to type it out:
12″ PowerBook
1.5 GHz G4 Processor
SuperDrive (DVD-RW, CD-RW)
80 GB hard drive
512 Mb RAM

This is the first time I’ve had my own computer. It’s very exciting.

I’ve been thinking about scrapping this blog and starting a new one. I no longer want all the entries dating back to 2003. I’m about to graduate high school and start a new life. New life = new blog? What think you?

Part of the reason I say this is because I constantly struggle with the website/livejournal balance. I have a livejournal that I update regularly- much more often than this. I like it because it’s a good way to meet peole and stay in touch. I’ve met a whole group of friends that I’ll be going to school with next year through livejournal. There’s a also the fact that my livejournal is more widely-read than this website. Thus, I get much more feedback. And I love feedback just as much as everyone else.

I’m not willing to give up my livejournal for the reasons mentioned above, and I’m not willing to stop updating my website because it’s something I really enjoy working on. Plus, I write more formally in here, and I think it’s a good idea to do at least semi-regular pseudo-formal writing. The problem is that I can’t seem to update both on a regular basis. I tend to write daily life things in my livejournal and more idea-realated things here. It’s much more difficult to write here- often I’ll have something I want to say, but I get so frustrated with trying to find the right words that I give up. For instance, I’ve been trying for a while to write a post on how I want to be a scientist, but I don’t agree with a lot of the methods I might be using or the goals I might be working toward.

The most logical course of action would be to give up one altogether and commit to the other, but I can’t. And the problem may get even worse next year, when I will have less time in which to update things. I’m not sure what to do. I’ll have to think about it.

In episode five of Serial Experiments Lain, a girl and several other people are handed packets of tissues by a boy on the street. When she opens it and takes the first one out, there is a message written on it. I love stuff like that - anonymous communication between strangers.

We live a very crowded world with relatively few personal connections. It’s a paradox that’s referred to all the time: the more people surround us, the lonelier we feel. In the small towns that used to be common, you might know the face of everyone in a three-mile radius. But if you live in a city, you’re lucky to know the name of everyone on your hall in your apartment building. We walk around, surrounded by people we try not to look at. I’m just as guilty of it as anyone else. I don’t smile at strangers. But I should.

I think that’s why situations like the one referred to above really make me happy. They make it seem like someone in that vast sea of people is trying to make a connection. I love seeing signs that aren’t advertisements or gang signs, just people trying to make your day better. I was in Chinatown a few months ago and saw a piece of paper on a lampost that said “She loves you” at the top and “yeah, yeah, yeah” at the bottom. It was great.

One of the coolest things I’ve heard about in a while is Bren Bataclan’s Smile Boston Project. Bren does paintings like these and attaches notes like this one. Most excellent. Boston could use more smiles.

Because of recent spam, I am now moderating comments. When you leave a comment I will get an email, and I will approve it. Thus, there will be a while between the time of posting and the time of other people being able to see the comment on the site. Sorry.

I promise to approve all comments from real people.

A while ago I posted a note on the info page of my photoblog telling loyal Opera users to email me and explain why they chose the browser they did. About a week ago, Jason became the first to do so. I thought people might be interested to read some of what he said.

I don’t pretend to sit here like some would and preach that my browser of choice is better than yours (Unless you happen to be an Internet Explorer user, in which case I’d find it almost impossible not to after I’d stopped laughing at you). Firefox is, as far as I’m concerned, a brilliant browser, and one that I happily and regularly recommend to friends, family, and colleagues. It’s raised the game for browsers, and really thrust its way into the market as a viable alternative to IE, and because of that you can’t help but respect it.

Firefox is superb, but I’ll always prefer Opera. From the first day I sat down and decided to try it I knew I’d found the interface that I wanted to use to browse the web. I don’t use Opera or indeed any browser because I want to “Rediscover the web”, I use it because I want to surf the web, and I want the tool that allows me to do that easily,
and efficiently.

Mouse Gestures, Customisation (But quickly! No Options menu, just one button press), the Wand (Opera’s Password Manager - All I need to do is go to a page that requires me to log in, and gesture forwards. If I’ve got multiple usernames, it’ll ask me which I want to use, if I haven’t it’ll log me in), they all work together to allow me to surf without thinking about how I’m doing it (That’s me personally, I’m not saying anyone else would have the same success using Opera as I do).

The whole point is though, that I think it comes down to personal preference. Right now I’m sat in front of a little Powerbook using Safari (A Mozilla based browser), and though I’ve tried Opera on it, it didn’t click like it did on my PC. It doesn’t bother me though. When I do surf on the Powerbook, I can surf almost as well as I can with Opera on the PC, and with time, I’ll probably be able to match it (Held back only by the touch-pad and screen size, one reason I use a USB mouse andexternal screen when I’m at home!)

“….in my experience, it is the best one out there for Windows.”

People say exactly the same for Opera too, and they’re right. It all comes down to personal preference, provided you don’t use IE, then it’s just blind ignorance. (Or you happen to be updating windows…)

I was very happy to get this email from Jason. It was exactly what I wanted: the opinion of someone who gave up on IE but ended up with Opera instead of Firefox or some other browser.

I guess my dislike if Opera is a personal preference. Honestly, I haven’t used it that much, but to me it seems ugly and bulky. Maybe that’s just my inherent distrust of feature-heavy programs coming out, though.

I am completely fine with browser partisanship. I am okay with people designing for certain browsers. I do it myself. I don’t care too much if your website doesn’t display correctly in my browser of choice. But I can’t stand it when someone creates a personal site that is only functional in a certain browser. I think that’s just irresponsible.

The site I’m thinking of has since changed its itself to something less offensive, but a few months ago I visited it to find that the navigation could only be accessed by IE users because of a fancy and completely unnecessary javascript trick. The owner had a note about it on the main page and everything.

And, come on, IE? None of the cool kids use IE anymore. Psh.*

*Author acknowledges that there may be a cool kid somewhere using IE right this very minute. But there shouldn’t be. She also acknowedges that her unconditional hatred for Internet Explorer may be more than a little immature. But she doesn’t care too much.

Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush.

Read more…

I guess that petition I signed in Harvard Square didn’t help.

You can guess how I feel about this. Words cannot express my sadness and fear.

Maybe the government could do more to encourage us to use less oil instead of destroying everything beautiful to get more and more and more to feed us with.

I saw Hotel Rwanda last night, and it made me think about how I’m living this luxurious, fairly meaningless life while people are suffering. I don’t want to be a person who ignores the rest of the world and is content with her SUV and her TiVo. It’s actually fairly easy for me to put the blinders on and become completely absorbed in my own little life. But on a fairly regular basis, I read a book or see a movie that really makes me reevaluate my lifestyle. I think that’s real art- stuff that makes you reconsider who you are and where you’re going.

I am very comfortable and incredibly rich compared to most of the world. I’m a middle-class white girl with good SAT scores and college educated parents who value education. Not only am I going to a fancy private college next year, my sister is going to a fancy private high school. We’ll both be on financial aid, yes, but we’re not getting anything close to free rides. Because I have so much, I feel like I need to give something back to the world. I can’t just accept that I’m better off than everyone else, and ignore their pain. I can’t be one of the people standing by and not doing anything.

And that’s why I’ve decided to join the Peace Corps when I graduate from college.

This relates, but I’m having a hard time explaining why:
One of my goals is to live consciously. I don’t want to go through the motions of life. I want to perform every task, make every decision, with knowledge of the meaning and consequences of my actions. I want to do everything on purpose. I think that that’s my path to spiritual fulfillment.