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Book Love (Wednesday, March 3, 2010)
My friend, Amy, posted a note today, wondering about people's book acquisition habits. Wondering about Amazon, versus local shops, and dead tree books versus e-books.
I must say, I prefer paper books over e-books, because the paper books seem much more permanent. I have books that are over a hundred years old. While I'm totally obsessive, and have electronic records that are over ten years old, for most people, electronic data is completely transient. Also, I refuse to purchase anything that might stop working because the organization that sold it to me decides they need more money. When I buy something, I want to have it available at my leisure, without having to worry about making backups, or converting formats, or having fresh batteries, or paying extra licensing fees.
And books are so much easier to look at than all but the best (i.e. most expensive) e-paper. I would love to have a paperback-sized device with an e-paper display, that could store or download-on-demand my favorite books, the latest best sellers, and today's newspaper. But the pricing model for such devices just doesn't work for me yet, and even so, for any book that I truly loved, I would still have to have the dead tree version at home on a shelf.
That would probably explain why (with apologies to Gaston) I use books in all of my decorating! I typically only buy fiction books that I love, having already borrowed them from the library. I have bought plenty of non-fiction in order to learn specific topics, and have the reference available at any time. As much as I read, I am always finding new books to love.
In fact, our biggest problem is not so much which books to buy and when or where... it's finding shelf space for all of them! Personally, I am simply unable to get rid of a book. And if I find a book in want of a home, whether new or used, on a shelf, or left behind on a park bench, I have an irrepressible compulsion to provide one for it. Would you believe that through twelve years of college, I never once sold back a text book? I just can't do it! You know how Uncle Scrooge had a Money Bin in Duck Tales? I want that, but with books.
Lamb Chops (Thursday, February 4, 2010)
Yeah, I know, I haven't updated in ages. But since it appears I haven't written about my lamb chops yet, I thought I should do that. This evening, I wanted to make something quick and easy, so it was lamb chops with Gorgonzola, and garlic sautéed spinach, accompanied by a very nice 2008 Erben Spätlese Riesling.
To prepare the spinach, I first sautéed some minced garlic in olive oil, and added some sesame seeds, for taste, and then added fresh baby spinach leaves, a bit at a time until the leaves absorbed enough olive oil to turn dark. As they sautéed, I continued to add more minced garlic, because we just really like garlic. All this takes about ten minutes over medium heat.
While you're cooking the spinach, you can make the lamb chops. It's easy. Preheat your broiler. Put some salt on both sides of your lamb chops. You'll want to put the oven rack on the highest shelf, closest to the heat. Broil the lamb chops on one side for about four minutes, then broil on the other side for three minutes, making sure that they don't catch on fire. That cooks them about medium, so cook more or less to taste. Finally, sprinkle liberally with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, and put back under the broiler until it's melted, and browned slightly — this takes about a minute, so pay attention, or it could catch on fire. Yeah, everything is best when it is nearly ready to catch fire.
It's that easy! And wow, it tastes good... and it's ready in less than twenty minutes!
IT 108 001 Programming Fundamentals - GMU Spring 2010 (Tuesday, December 22, 2009)
I will be teaching IT 108 Section 001, Programming Fundamentals, for the Applied Information Technology department at George Mason University in the Spring semester of 2010. I've noticed that a number of students have been trying to find out who I am, since my name was added to the course. At some point, all students will have access to Blackboard, where the syllabus and other course materials will be posted. These materials are not yet available, but I hope to have them up well before the start of the semester. The university is also having difficulty provisioning my GMU e-mail account, so right now, there is no good way to contact me for course-related issues. I'm posting this message as a courtesy for students who are like me, and have to know as much as possible in advance. In general, I will not be posting course-related information or material to this site during the semester. Enjoy your winter holiday!
Update! My GMU e-mail account has finally been fixed, so please direct any course related correspondence to bziman@gmu.edu. Any message not sent from your GMU account and with "IT108-001" in the subject line will probably be eaten by my spam filter.
Yawn! (Monday, December 7, 2009)
Private post. Click on title to log in.
Time Goes By (Tuesday, November 24, 2009)
And yet another month goes by, and I haven't updated. The sad truth is that I haven't updated, because I really haven't accomplished anything. I'm still trying to get the house squared away, I'm still trying to get my electronics squared away — to add insult to injury, the power supply on my main server died the other day, to add to my new DVR with glitchy audio, my media center PC which is still in parts in unopened shipping boxes, and an Android phone which I haven't had time to beat into submission (though at least I can use it to make phone calls). Not to mention that we've been under the weather the last week or so. Not a lot of fun.
On the bright side, there is at least potential from some of this stuff to improve soon. I've got my new kitchen countertops ordered. I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better. We had a really great pre-Thanksgiving dinner with the family on Sunday, where we played many amusing hours of high intensity charades. There's a possibility of some interesting stuff in the Spring, but that is not yet set in stone.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be doing some fancy software stuff, so I better get back to the grindstone. I will hopefully have more interesting updates over the next few weeks.
Home Sweet- Gah, What is All This Crap? (Thursday, October 29, 2009)
Yeah, yeah, I haven't updated in a long time. I've been a bit busy with work, and around the house. Let's see... we'll start with an update on renovations. My contractor's tile and flooring company went out of business, which means I'll have to pay retail prices for my kitchen backsplash. And my bathroom, too, since I discovered that there's some sort of leak, which is going to require the wall to be pulled down, in order to fix. Speaking of walls, the my contractor is going to be building a new framed wall on top of the Ryland catastrophe that came with the house — you know, where the front wall doesn't have a stud in the corner, and the side wall isn't framed at all, causing the corner to flex and crack, repeatedly. That will not be cheap.
On the exterior, a few weeks ago, I paid some workers to clear cut the bushes in front of the house, as they were trying to eat my windows, and they were ugly, as well as unmanageable. After several weeks of bare dirt (if you can call rock and clay "dirt"), I finally enlisted the help of my father-in-law, and we collected nearly a ton of garden soil, brick, and plants, in order to build it out in a more aesthetic manner. He helped me collect the stuff and unload it, but then it got dark, leaving me to finish it off on my own over the past week.
My yard isn't level (mostly due to half the yard washing down the cut sewer pipe, courtesy of Ryland and their duct tape), so I needed to dig out a trench on one side, and build up slightly on the other, in order to build a short retaining wall, which I then backfilled with the new garden soil. That work is mostly done, and the wall is fairly straight, nearly level, and tenuously plumb. The new garden is framed with a pair of Dwarf English Boxwoods, which are now planted, and the center is decorated by three Red Drift Rose bushes, which are still in pots, sitting in their holes in the ground — I keep running out of daylight. So my final task, the next time I have both sun and time, is to actually put the roses in the ground, and lay down the last two bags of soil. And grade everything to ensure proper drainage. That will be nice.
Back inside, I finally bit the bullet and decided to trade in my trusty DirecTV with Tivo, in order to get the new(er) DirecTV HD-DVR. The Tivo box is a hundred times better, but it simply can't do HDTV, and I just couldn't wait another basketball season for DirecTV to release their new Tivo box. After a failed installation attempt last Friday, a competent installer came on Monday, and we are all squared away. It's not nearly as usable as the Tivo, but it will do. And it is so nice to get all my shows at the proper resolution and aspect ratio. It's also nice to get television in Dolby Digital surround sound, too (a feature the Tivo was supposed to have, but that I never actually got to work).
I had been using my media center PC to watch HD programs, but I may have mentioned that I somehow fried its power supply a few weeks ago, and the system has been offline. So now that I have the new DirecTV box, I don't have to worry quite as much about the media center. Nevertheless, I did finally order new parts for the computer, some of which have arrived, and the rest are en route. I wonder if I will ever have enough free time to get it put together. I'm sure Vista is going to give me a really hard time, as the only thing that isn't being swapped out, is the hard drive!
Finally, in the realm of electronics, I finally bit the bullet and bought a smart phone. I have been really excited about Google Android, and the HTC Hero phone, for a while now, but was waiting for that phone to be released here in the United States. Well, as luck would have it, Sprint was the company to release it, so I didn't have to switch providers to get service, and I managed to negotiate a fairly good deal, for an unlimited data plan. Of course, all this is predicated on figuring out how the new phone works, and getting it activated. Which I haven't managed to get done yet. It's on my to-do list, I swear!
Anyway, I think that's all the updates for now. I should get back to work, but it is hard to work, dressed up for Halloween at the office. I'm sure pictures will find their way onto the Internet at some point.
Ignoring Spurious Repeated KeyAdapter Events in Java (Friday, October 9, 2009)
When running in an X11 environment, it appears as though either Java or the windowing system stupidly generate lots of repeated key events when you hold a key down. As it is impractical to get users to reconfigure their systems, and Sun seems unable to fix this issue (having been reported nearly ten years ago). I have written an adapter that is an attempt to filter out the useless events, and released it here as open source software.
Many people have whined about this, but few have fixed it. Some have tried, but their solutions are not as clean as my OCD nature requires. Here are some examples of what this is meant to handle:
- Bug ID: 4153069 keyReleased behaviour incorrect
- Java Programming - Re: Throttling key released events.
- How to know when a user has really released a key in Java?
The goal is to generate a KeyPressed event when a key is pressed, and to generate a KeyReleased event when a key is released. And ONLY when a key is pressed or released.
Links
Kickball Update (Thursday, October 1, 2009)
This evening, we played our final regular season kickball game, which we won, handily. That puts us at six wins and one loss on the season, second only to "Team Awesome" (who we should have beaten, last week). Next week, we have a bye week, and then the tournament is on Saturday, October 17, at Autumnwood Park (wherever that is). It was a little on the nippy side tonight, and since I'm considering joining a winter league team, I probably need to figure out some sort of long pants solution for playing. I look retarded in sweat pants, but I'm sure something cool will occur to me. I'm also excited about the coming smoking ban, as adult kickball seems more of an excuse to get together and drink heavily, than anything else, and it will be nice to be able to join the team at the bar without worrying about air quality.