Zeno's Paradox: I'm Still Here

Zeno's Paradox

October 17, 2003 - I'm Still Here

My writing has been sparse as of late. I have a perfectly good excuse and some updates.

First of all, my attention has been singularly focused on one thing this week -- writing a Flash MX component that bridges a thing we're working on at Northwestern called ProjectPad with the Oyez website and it's search API (link). Since my boss is going to Glasgow next week to demo the software, I've been working hard to get the piece written. I've been on computers minimally this week in order to conserve my coding energy (a bad term, but apt to describe the fact that I can only code so much in a specific time period) to focus on this project. It's been a flood of information as I have been doing the equivalent of having been thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool in order to learn to swim in the first place. It's been a birth by fire with respect to unit testing implementation methodology, ActionScript programming, and Flash-based GUI work. Since my hard deadline is Monday, the next week should return to normal.

I read a really funny article on EGM about today's 10-13 year olds playing older games like Pong and Donkey Kong and their reactions. Just one comment... If I hear of any munchkins making the same types of comments about my beloved Final Fantasy games on the PlayStation, I will have to take that can of munchkin whoop-ass out of my cubbard.

In related news, I have finally finished Final Fantasy IX. I was satisfied with the ending and thought that the game was well done. It falls between VII and VII as my favorite Final Fantasy Playstation game, but it was well worth the time spent on it. I'm kind of sad now, as I feel that I've reached the end of an era with respect to these games. The Playstation Final Fantasy games were among the best ever made, and now I have played them all. Perhaps it's time to start thinking of the PS2...

Regarding the Cubs. I broke them. I don't know how many times they have done this, but every time they have given up eight runs in a single inning, I have been there watching. It happened on Memorial Day, and it started to happen just as I watched Game 6. My bad -- I won't watch next year. Promise.

Discourse04 -- the political site idea -- has been at a standstill and I'm debating whether to continue. The hesitation is two-fold. First of all, I've been informed that The Daily Kos -- another political discussion site -- has moved to Scoop. The second reason is that this week has shown me how thin I am stretching myself and that might not be so good. With respect to the Daily Kos, I'm interested in this as it already has a community and I suspect that many of the structural changes that I think are needed on WatchBlog are probably implemented there. I do wonder whether it is "neutral" enough or willing to accommodate opposing viewpoints in articles. At the moment, it seems to lean center-left. I'll have to explore some more and see if this site will work for my purposes. Does anyone want to take the "discourse04.org" and "discourse04.com" names off my hands?

In other news, I'm also eagerly awaiting MacOS X Panther. I took a look at iTunes on Windows yesterday and was fairly impressed. The things that really caught my attention were the new accessories for iPods such as voice recorders and camera storage interfaces. I desperately want to play with these gadgets, but I have too old of an iPod. Anyone want to subsidize my purchase of a new iPod by purchasing my old one? I was also impressed by Apple and Pepsi's idea of giving iTunes Music Store songs away as a Pepsi promotion. I'm not a big soft-drink drinker, but this type of thing may make a Pepsi buyer in the short term. (I think the promotion goes from Feb. 04 to Mar. 04.) Yeah, I know -- I'm a sucker. My other big question is now that Audible is selling audiobooks via iTMS, can I get my account transferred over and shop for books via the iTMS interface instead of the god-awful Audible.Com site? Maybe I should quit questioning this in my blog and write Audible a letter.

I found out the vol. 5 of New X-Men was out in trade paperback format yesterday. I've been very impressed at the new directions that New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men has taken, so this was a no brainer. (I've not started to read Xtreme X-Men though.) Again, I found the writing and art to be relevant and outstanding. I'm just glad that the creative teams have decided to take X-Men in a more reality-centric way than their predecessors. (For example, students in Xavier's school have been dealing with a growing drug problem, teenage pregnancy, and Cyclops and the White Queen have been having an affair of a sort.) I was dismayed when the apparently killed off Magneto (again) in Genosha via Sentinels -- but sneaking a peak at current issues seems to have resolved that issue for me. I just have to wait for volume six now before I can get caught up. (For the record, my favorite rendition of Magneto was the one done by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee in X-Men 1 - 3. Great stuff.)

Ok, time to start getting ready for work. I have a GUI to craft among other things. I hope this is a reasonable update to what's been going on here.

Posted by br284 at 06:43 AM

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i'll trade you my creative mp3 player for your outmoded ipod if you throw in a windows thingamabob that'll make it work with my computer. deal?

Posted by ... on October 17, 2003 08:38 AM