blogwaffe

Greg says I should put a little shoutout to DrLP whenever sprachwaffe get’s updated. Come on, Greg, ever here of RSS?

But, really it’s not a bad idea. Who in their right mind would feed off of sprachwaffe. Except me, of course, but it’s for administrative purposes, I swear. And I think Paul.za does too. Him I have no excuse for.

But speaking of technological incompetence, what do you get when you cross William Gibson, Bruce Springsteen and a fifteen year old script kiddie? Some form of heinous, ill-formed, leeching invertebrate who is but one example of the hoarde of “beta users” WordPress has managed to accumulate.

The upcoming version of WordPress is in beta at the moment and is in need of testing. Since nothing here is terribly important (I think we can all admit that, right?), I decided to make blogwaffe a testbed for WordPress as of the now passed alpha phase of the development. WordPress is an extremely open community; I didn’t have to sign up for the privilege (if you want to consider it as such) of doing this, I just downloaded the software and had at it. And I’ve kept having at it all the way through alpha and into beta in the here and now.

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The one week mark has come and gone. I offer no apologies. Anyone who reads this site is used to it :)

(So Bert is better at blogging than I am. Get over it.)

The title of this post, such as it is, comes not from a lack of timely content, but instead from a project with which I probably should not have involved myself. I’ve… sort of… volunteered to write up a good chunk of the basic end user documentation for the new version of WordPress (currently in beta, and currently powering this site) on its new wiki. The long of it: I’ve been spending time I don’t really have on culling data from other documentation and writing up new stuff. The short of it: I can’t stop typing in wiki markup.

It’s actually pretty convenient, I’ll have to reevaluate my stance on things like Markdown and Textile. Previously, I’d thought they were for sissies. Perhaps my opinion hasn’t changed, but instead I’ve simply admitted to myself that I’m a sissy.

At any rate, the project is going reasonably well, but a bit slowly. I’ll be quite happy when it’s over (this weekend?).

It wasn’t much different than any other day. I didn’t go to campus because it was raining all day (and was that thunder I heard?) and just read stuff here in the SLR. To mix things up a bit, I pissed Greg off by solving his new rubik’s like invertable tetrahedron. Sukah.

More gratifyingly, I also headed over to amazon to spend a gift certificate (LotR:TT&RotK) and ended up donating to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund for the victims of the December 26 Tsunami. So far, Amazon has amassed over $13 million from nearly 170 thousand contributions.

A few clicks, and it could be more.

I saw a friend of mine (more directly of my brother’s) today for the first time in a year (nearly to the day). He mentioned to me that he had heard of this site through an acquaintance of his from (as he recalled) Scotland. As he related, simply mentioning Allen’s name in conversation brought an inquisitive response: “is he related to Michael D. Adams, publisher of the incomparable blogwaffe, handsome, erudite polymath, and ladies man extraordinaire?”. Incredulous, he responded: “Yes, but you forgot to mention ‘kung fu master'”.

This is made all the more remarkable by noting that Matt, the informant in question, works at Oxford. Thus, the association is entirely extranational (from the perspective of an American resident). One obvious explanation involves a direct Saucy or xaosseed relationship, but I prefer to think the connection is separated by more degrees than that.

So I guess that makes .us, .uk (both England and Scotland), .ie and (at least on occassion) .za. Curious. But not unwelcome.

It has recently come to my attention that there are people out there who are actively involved in making a difference. In talking with some of these people, I have realized that I am not one of them. Educating children, feeding the hungry, counselling, community development, hell even auditing and entertaining all have wonderful, respectable uses in today’s society. Slacking off in grad school studying analytical bounds on quantum search algorithms seems not to. Sure, it’s easy to say that something I do will eventually be a part of the next big development in computing or the next big theory describing our universe; neither of these things is impossible.

But that’s just the thing, my field (on many levels) deals with probabilities. It is certain that being an assistant at a preschool helps people’s lives. It is known that financial services are a useful commodity and that entertainment is highly valued. But it is not known that some bit of research I do (supposing I ever actually do any) will result in any change in lives or society, let alone an improvement.

It’s also a fair argument to say that, currently, I am simply being trained. My real accomplishments will come when(?) I am a card carrying professor either leading a group of intelligent researchers on the future’s current topics, or teaching to a room of eager students looking to learn about the ways of nature (man will it ever be hard to dash the dreams of the naive). But that doesn’t help much with the fact that right now, sitting here in some torn up jeans and a wrinkled guess brand shirt having just finished a helping or two of Mac n’ Cheese, my current, cumulative offering to the world at large is a few bucks to a couple worthy causes, a couple “charity” concerts with some old choirs, volunteering at a church rummage sale or two, making fun of a few detriments to society (I’m talking about you, JH), and lots of well wishing. Oh – and I gave some homeless dude some spare change.

I’ve talked about something like this before, but it was thrust into my mind again this afternoon at Holly and Cheryl’s surprise (SUPPLIES!) birthday party downstairs. All of their friends are real people. What’s worse is that real people seem to be impressed with a person studying physics in grad school at caltech even when that person does absolutely nothing of immediate consequence. That really speaks to the amount of faith society has in science and it’s far reaching consequences: faith I’m not sure I deserve (though I can certainly name many people here who do: developements in medicine, medical technology, environmental studies, alternative energy, technologies and methods which could be considered ‘meta’ in the context of this tirade…).

Perhaps I should just be a stronger believer in ‘division of labor’ as a key and fundamental component of our society.

I turned in my final (who has finals?), I passed GR, and I faithfully attended every first-year seminar. All I need to do before laying this term completely to rest is grade about fifteen labs. By the time you see me gate crashing the annual chemistry party, I’ll be at peace.

Speaking of, I’ve been telling people I’m going as someone’s ‘+2’ (though I was technically invited). Just who that someone is has yet to be pinned down – it may change throughout the evening. To further complicate (and for that reason), I tried inviting Holly as my guest to increase the maximal degree of separation, but she said she already had plans. So, is there anyone who wants free Ernie’s? Not that I want to get out of the oracle’s good graces, I just plan on having a good time.

Our cable broadband service died yesterday around 2pm. So to the both of you that read this outside of my apartment and couldn’t find it yesterday, I apologize. That’s what you get for looking at a site hosted from some dude’s apartment.

But, man, I almost didn’t make it. How did I survive the entire year last year without internet access in my apartment? It boggles the mind and defies reason.

But we’re back now (though Paul.za and Greg don’t know yet). Until charter decides to freak out again.

We totally need a satellite feed. Or some backbone.

Handel’s, but still good.

The concert (only half of which was half of Handel’s piece) was a joint effort between four Caltech groups: the Chamber Singers (or thereabouts, I’ve left the program in my car), the Men’s Glee Club, the Women’s Glee Club and the Chamber Orchestra (in order of appearance). I should preface any further thoughts by noting that I had… not terribly high expectations. Caltech is a small place and so doesn’t have a large talent pool from which to fish. Also, we’re a skosh on the technical end of things; people talk about correlations between scientifically|mathematically minded people and musically minded people, but just because a person has the interest or the knowledge, doesn’t mean that person has the skill or the artistry. Violinists are the stereotypical exception. If you find a scientist or a mathematician who plays violin, chances are he|she is pretty good.

But on to the show. There were no seats left when we arrived. Paul.za and I found Katie and Ted and decided to sit on the hall steps where we could still hear (and to a great extent see) the ongoings. I ditched them, however, when I learned Michelle was sitting by herself (in a seat!) and that her neighbor had left. But, seriously. On to the show.

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While I was busily trying to calculate the mass of the neutrino, Dixie stole my post. Sitting in my apartment last night at like 3:30am, I decided to cruise over to her site before writing up how miserable and miserly of a person I am. It’s a good thing I did, otherwise I’d be labelled quite the poser.

That said: I’m a miserable and miserly person. What’s worse is that it doesn’t bother me enough to change my ways. But at least admitting I have a problem is the first step toward recovery.

Allen bought a condo. Well, by the time Allen is fifty-six, he’ll have bought a condo. Right now, some nice people at a bank are just letting him squat on their property.

The nice two bedroom unit is now furnished with (nearly) all of his worldly goods as well as one or two of the otherworldly ones. The new place could probably host about twenty people comfortably and sleep about ten (depending on heights and relations). Sounds like a party to me.

I went down the day after Thanksgiving to help make this all possible. We rented a fourteen foot U-Haul (driven by yours truly – I was a real long distance hauler that day – drivin’ my rig from state to state, sleepin’ in rest stops, pissin’ in bottles, eatin’ burger king, peerin’ down the tops of women in convertibles and jerkin’ off to the Celine Dion station all day long) and made two trips from Poway to South Escondido (apparently, unless you specify the quadrant, people think you live in the boonies). Many of you may know just how good at parallel parking I am. You should have seen me in the truck.

Following a hard day’s work of manual labor, we hit up the Shakespeare Pub in or around downtown San Diego. Black and Tan and Shepherd’s Pie.

A day well spent.