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. 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.

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.

Site things you probably don’t care about, but I do:

- Started using Site Meter, which rocks because it allows me to ignore my own IP. See, the site gets so few visitors that I have to make sure not to go to it, or I’ll end up being responsible for a fairly large percentage of the hits.

- The linkroll over on the left is being funny. It’s supposed to be listed in order of when I added the links, but it semms to be putting all the new ones at the bottom. It put some in the middle at one point, too.

- Slightly new header up top, because I still don’t trust your ability to pronounce “lodenocity” correctly. Let me know is the smaller writing is hard to read.

- The Greymatter template variables are starting to be unreliable again. I wish I knew why that keeps happening. It may have something to do with my reuploading the file that they’re in, but I don’t think that should be a problem. The new copy is automatically CHMOD’ed to the right settings and is still included in Greymatter files. So when you see weird stuff over there, it’s not me being lazy. It’s Greymatter being crazy.

- Added a Recently Reading thing over on the right sidebar. For things I’m in the middle of or have just finished. The plan it to keep five titles up at all times and update them when necessary. I don’t know how good I’ll be about updating.

For the record, I would like to officially object to the cover that I, Robot is sporting right now. They’re making a movie of the same name (it seems to have little in common with the book, other than the Three Laws and various names), and Will Smith, a star of the movie, now dominates the book cover. I hate when they adapt books to movies and then redo the book covers to match the movie. I, Robot has been around forever (even though I only got around to reading it last week), and it deserves to be its own media entity, seperate and distinct from any and all upstart adaptations.