Journal

In October 2004, as a freshman in college, a friend insisted that I join Facebook. I didn't know what Facebook was, but I looked it up and joined anyway. I don't have to tell you what Facebook is, everyone in the world knows. The term is ubiquitous and generic. It is the Kleenex of social media.

I just started using git, one of the newer-fangled pieces of revision-control software. It was originally written by Linus Torvalds for the Linux kernel...so it must be good right? I haven't been using it long enough to have a strong opinion, but so far so good.

In recent years Javascript has gained widespread acceptance across the web thanks, in part, to Ajax and its role in rich web applications. Javascript can do some pretty cool things, but I don't like to give it free reign in my browser - Javascript is sometimes malicious, often annoying and always overdone. I hate most of the Javascript on the web, which is ironic because I work with it all day. Malicious Javascript can force redirects and launch popups and drive-by downloads. Most browsers allow you to turn off Javascript, but this disables it globally. That is not ideal, luckily there is another solution.

They're filming scenes for Transformers 3 on Michigan Avenue this weekend. This meant that getting to work Friday was more interesting than usual. Upper Michigan was completely closed off, but luckily lower Michigan was still open. I caught a glimpse of the set at lunch. There were overturned cars everywhere and the entire street was dusted with fake debris. It looked pretty authentic. There were a dozen semi trucks parked around but none of them were Optimus Prime, or any transformer for that matter. They were just regular trucks, probably used to haul in all of the props. The city must be making a lot of money on this if they are allowing a movie crew to close off a few blocks of the Magnificent Mile on a summer weekend.

As I was leaving work today, I saw that a man had set up a full drum kit on the sidewalk beside Michigan Avenue. Often, street performers will drum on buckets or bongos, but I have never seen one use a full drum kit. The drummer was really good. He was very fast with the double bass pedal and his phrases were interesting. I wanted to stay and listen, but I had to get home. At one point he threw a drumstick high in the air, intending to catch it. The wind blew it into the middle of the street. He was able to beat the traffic and retrieve it though.

For the past year and a half, my life has been devoted to the cruel mistress that is Drupal. Like any forlorn affair, there have been good times and bad times but mostly just the foreboding sense that our relationship was doomed from the start. For a long time I really wanted to like Drupal. I tried to find some redeeming quality that could tip the scales in its favor. I tried really hard to find even a shred of evidence that I had not wasted my time. After 1.5 years I'm admitting defeat.

I had a bit of a facepalm moment the other day as I was setting up my development environment at work. To get everything working, I needed to alter the PATH variable to include some new directories. In Windows and Unix-like systems the PATH is the list of directories where the system will look for executable files. So when you type a command at the command line, the shell will look through each directory in the PATH for a file that matches what you typed. If it finds one, that executable is run. If not, you get a big fat error.

It's amazing how some warm air and sunshine can completely change your attitude.

I stopped drinking caffeine a few weeks ago because I had been grinding my teeth at night. Although bruxism, as it's called, can be hereditary, it can also be caused by stress or too much caffeine. I decided to try kicking caffeine and see if that made any difference. As a software developer, caffeine is my lifeblood. Abstaining from it is a sacrilege. Nevertheless, I had to try.

I decided to write a summary of the top albums I listened to this year. This is not a list of albums that came out this year. The albums are anywhere from 2 to 20 years old. When I get into an album, I tend to listen to nothing but that album for weeks. By doing this, I come to associate certain songs/albums with different times in my life. For example, the winter of my sophomore year at university, all I listened to was Dog Man Star, an album by the band Suede. Listening to that album now, sends me right back to that time. It's kind of cool. Anyway, here are the albums that defined 2009 for me.