I joined Facebook when it was young and relatively immature (remember when it was TheFacebook.com?), so I’ve missed out on riding its usage peak. I just can’t compete with college undergraduates in terms of the number of free hours per week I’m willing to spend clicking through a web site.

But here, as far as I can tell, are a few ground rules for anyone who is just getting started with the Facebook phenomenon:

1. Add as many applications as you possibly can. The more people have to scroll to get to the bottom of your profile, the better. I think there are seven different “Zombie versus Vampire” applications available. Add them all.
2. Invite all of your friends to every app you find. Even if you don’t intend to use it. Because applications are fun. They do stuff! Even if you don’t want it. Like a zombie bite.
3. Post as many photos as you can of yourself drinking. Future employers will appreciate your willingness to share reflections of your social life with your extended network of friends.
4. Post as many photos as you can of other people drinking and “tag” them, so that it forces your pictures onto their profile. It might come in handy if you’re ever competing with them for your dream job.

So I got back from Japan back on October 27th–the Saturday before Halloween. As is customary these days, the trials and tribulations of the “real world” kept me from posting about my experiences for a while. Aunt Nancy says it’s not a bad thing for life to keep you from blogging, and (seeing that she works in the publishing industry) I am glad that I think she’s right.

Japan, though, was incredible. Totally worth it. Big thanks to Genevieve for letting me crash on the futon while I was in Osaka, and for lending me Lonely Planet Japan (without which I’d have spent two weeks lost on the train).

I was going to expound upon the mysteries and wonders and strangeness and haunting familiarity of everything in Japan, but a couple days ago, Charles Stross (a writer whom I admire deeply) elaborated it very fittingly in his blog. You should probably read that, too. So I’ll stick to covering the highlights of my own trip and encourage the curious to trawl my Flickr photos.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s a lot easier to make that decision when you realize how much lighter your carry-on bags are without the Macbook. Let’s see if I can handle two weeks of being unplugged.

But I am already kicking myself for not using Amazon Prime to order myself an electronic translator before heading out. (I never claimed to be good at planning vacations.)

• Friday I drove down to Fairfield and caught the opening night of 300.
• Saturday I went into New York City to see Mike and Kara.
• Sunday I drove out to Somers to visit my grandmother.
• Monday I’m going to Philadelphia for work.
• Tuesday morning I have to drive back up to Boston.
• Wednesday we fly out to Colorado for the Arcadia off-site.
• Sunday evening we fly back into Boston; the next morning I fly to Atlanta.
• Thursday I take a couple days off and visit friends in Washington, DC.
• Afterwards, back to Atlanta for another week.

It’s a good thing rent is cheap in my corner of Brighton, or I’d consider moving all of my furniture into a self-storage unit.

This is not exactly a New Year’s resolution, but it’s not far from it. I don’t read enough these days; rather than sit down at the computer when I get bored, I’m trying to get in the habit of picking up whatever book I’m working on. I’ve also got to shed the habit of abandoning books, about 100 pages in, because a more interesting book shows up. I blame ADD, but the fish oil pills are certainly helping. (More on that later.)

Anyways, rather than take a page from JP (who recaps what he’s read), here is a list of what I hope to read before the end of January.

• A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading (2006), ed. Dave Eggers
• Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After The Fall by Andrew Meier
• Next by Michael Crichton

Here’s what I’ve managed to read in the last four or five months. Clearly, I’ve got to pick up the pace to get through my January list.

• A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
• Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Well, after a month-long hiatus, I’m back on the blog grid. A couple people have pointed out that Cogito recently flooded the aggregators and planets out there with a whole lot of old entries; I apologize, but I don’t think I could’ve helped it.

On top of that, many have pointed out over the past several weeks that my domain had become nothing but an alias for the GEECS home page. While it was an inconvenience, I couldn’t be happier about it; I’m glad that the GEECS (a student group at Northfield Mount Hermon) have finally regained enough presence to set up a server and take ownership of their domain name. When I graduated from NMH, the GEECS had been emaciated by a combination of administrative antagonism and student apathy. So it’s always great to see them back in action.

Anyways, when they switched DNS, they didn’t switch my CNAME. No big deal. A few weeks later (and a couple panicked emails), I got my domain back.

(What I still don’t have back is cogito.cc, which GoDaddy has shut down for being associated with an active phisher. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t my server, it was a subdomain registered through the same dynamic DNS service. They want $200, I’m not paying, and I’m very angry, but I’ll tell that story in a later post.)

Once I got my domain back, I realized that my Movabletype databases were all screwed up. It turns out I just needed to upgrade them (which in Debian is db4.2_upgrade, not db_upgrade as I’d been taught to expect), but before I figured that out, I ended up upgrading to MovableType 3.0. This, in turn, wiped out half of my templates (and munged the other half that it didn’t just overwrite), so I followed the upgrade with a couple hours of searching through my browser cache, cut-and-pasting the HTML, and sticking MovableType tags back in. (I can hear you all clamoring to switch to Wordpress, and maybe one day, but for now I like not having to set up a SQL database on my Linode.)

So the short version of a long story is that the MovableType upgrade spammed the planets, it wasn’t intentional, and I still dislike BerkeleyDB. (Not as much as I dislike MySQL, though.) In the works are another site redesign, a new content management system for the static pages, and maybe even a better blogging engine.

But for now, lunch.

Everyone start double-fisting your drinks! Not only is it Saint Patrick’s Day:, an event itself worthy of heavy celebration, but today is the day that UNIX turns 1111111111 seconds old. (Well, not UNIX itself, really, but who needs technicalities when there are beers to be had?)

I haven’t had nearly as much time to spend on my spare projects as I might like. I suppose that’s something every working stiff muses about, but I really do regret not having the time to update this blog, develop Payago to a point that it’s usable, or to tackle my gigantic reading list.

Lately I’ve been going on a gadget spree. I bought a “new computer”: to replace my aging Athlon 1200, a Bluetooth card for my laptop (so I can use my phone as a GPRS modem), and I’m in the process of building a MythTV box. (More on that later.)

I’m also attending PyCon 2005, which should give me some time to stop thinking about work and get some serious coding done. It’ll also be good to meet some Divmod team members and other Twisted users.

However, no matter what I’m doing at work, where I’m traveling, or what side projects I’m not spending enough time on, it’s good to know that some things never change. The RIAA, perpetually clueless, still hasn’t figured out that its old business model is dying (and that its profit margins are dwindling). Its latest move? Pressuring Apple to increase the price of downloadable singles. Some people just don’t get it.