Posts

Feb 12, 2004 — I’ll be adding my thoughts soon about three books by C. S. Lewis that I’ve recently finished. Although I had a few false starts with the Narnia books as a youth, these were read more to find out about the real Christian thinker, and because I wanted to branch out from Tolkien to some of his colleagues.

Dec 4, 2003 — A few weeks ago I decided to put some thought into why I have so much trouble getting good at real-time strategy computer games. I went ahead and submitted it to GameSpot, my favorite gaming news site, which does a weekly set of op-ed pieces with a slot for a reader to opine. Well, my article was accepted! Have a read – I’m the second one down.

Oct 12, 2003 — I’ve made two changes to my video game family. First, I bought a GameCube and a couple games (Zelda, Viewtiful Joe). Also, a friend with a vinyl cutter made a wood-grain applique for my Xbox. Click to see the new family!

Sep 10, 2003 — I’m a serious gamer, just below the rank of what the press call “hardcore.” I own an XBox, a GameBoy, and a very fast PC. By way of Mac hardware, I own an aging 1999 Powerbook, and I have no plans to buy another Mac. In fact, any serious gamer must automatically reject the Mac.

Sep 10, 2003 — Please understand I’m of two minds about the Mac, and so my remarks should be taken like those of a concerned parent, rather than, say, a Palestinian suicide bomber. My main points are

Sep 7, 2003 — I’ve been writing a pretty major piece of Mac software for almost two and a half years. As I’ve gone along, I’ve run up against the shortcomings not only of the developer resources, but of course also in OS X itself, since developers are also users.

Jun 28, 2003 — Got wireless today! It’s totally new to me, but not to most other people, so I won’t dwell on it. Anyway, I’m in bed, which means Penelope is in the chair and Alison’s got her arms all over my pillows. This laptop has a very loud hard drive, which I already knew, but which is a bit more of a problem in this context.

Jun 11, 2003 — I just finished watching Armageddon and it reminds me of an issue I have with the grammar of the Aerosmith/Dianne Warren song “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” The lyrics go “…don’t want to fall asleep / ‘cause I miss you babe / and I don’t want to miss a thing.”

Apr 20, 2003 — Yesterday was my 30th birthday. Alison threw me a surprise party (just the two of us) on Friday night and made me a bunny cake! Yesterday she gave me a bottle of really nice tequila, and I had some with breakfast ;-). My brother got me a book, and there are more gifts on the way that I don’t know what they are. Alison and I had a nice visit to our favorite boba tea place in Long Beach, then headed over to Anaheim to see the Angels play the Mariners, and I got a proper Angels hat. It’s made of really light, breathable material and it was very comfortable. It also represents some sort of turning point for me, as I do not change baseball allegience lightly, though eventually I guess I always do.

Apr 14, 2003 — This past week, my wife’s dissertation was aproved by Columbia’s dissertation office, meaning the printouts had the right margins, her paperwork made its way from the Art History department, her library fees were all paid, her account was in good standing, and 12 years of your typical bureaucratic wrangling has sorted itself out.

Apr 14, 2003 — I actually had time to play some Gameboy games today! I have quite a backlog, which will surprise no one who knows me, and it felt good to give it some attention.

Apr 9, 2003 — Bob Frankston, co-creator of the original spreadsheet VisiCalc, has recently written down a postmortem, 25 years later!

Apr 8, 2003 — Not that you care, but I’m going to merge in all my work content into a category, and see how it coexists with my main category.

Apr 8, 2003 — My birthday’s coming up, so head on over to amazon.com and check out my wish list! :)

Apr 1, 2003 — Boy, Bounceweb threw us for a loop. Our site went down so hard that when it came back up, various files and directories were gone! They had to restore from backups, and even so there was a lot of work to do.

Mar 8, 2003 — So I guess I’ve made a mess of all my various weblogs. First there was a Movable Type blog in 2001, then a radio blog, then a new radio blog, and then this new Movable Type blog. I’m going to settle on this one, but all my old posts to the other blogs will just have to be lost unless I can muster the enthusiasm for scrounging them up somehow.

Mar 8, 2003 — Still working on Fabric of Reality, because I am a little lost in the chapter on quantum computing, which was the main topic I bought the book to read about. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

Mar 8, 2003 — Now that I’m finished American Gods, I’m just reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. It’s about physics, quantum computation, DNA, and lots of other topics, sort of unified into a really interesting and idiosyncratic world-view. David Deutsch is a father of quantum computing, so he knows what he’s talking about. I always prefer well-expressed personal viewpoints to bland, objective information.

Mar 8, 2003 — I just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed it, but it was a little slow. Basically it explores the idea (in fictional form) that gods from the various pantheons traveled to America with the settlers and started trying to eke their living here. In this day and age, it’s not easy to be a god, and they’re almost like pathetic people.

Mar 8, 2003 — Oh my, I haven’t posted for a long time.

Aug 14, 2002 — So langmead.info seems relatively stable at the moment. As of now I have tried three hosting companies. This latest one strikes a good balance between price and features. They are having trouble installing PHPlib, which is needed for IMP, which is a web-based email client Alison wants. I might consider moving if they never get around to that (or upgrading to PHP 4.1, which would be just as good).

Aug 14, 2002 — Test, test. Blah, blah, blah.

Aug 1, 2002 — We have proper internet hosting now, via the domain langmead.info. More soon.

May 17, 2002 — Alison and I are all set up in L.A.! We have an apartment on the beach, and two cars. We’re moving June 1. Here are some pictures.

May 7, 2002 — So I have progressed nicely in my quest to hear new music that I like. I bought two CDs! Blur’s greatest hits (or is it “best of?”) and Ben Folds Five (Whatever and ever amen).