Thursday, January 31

on reiki

Until now I waned to become a reiki healer and I did, except for an insignificant detail: reiki practitioners are not healers.

I am not a healer. I will have to remember that.

Monday, January 28

my startling piece of obviousness

The more I feel the need to be right, the more I falsify my memories, so they can be interpreted as me, being right.

So much for learning from the past!

Sunday, January 27

new things: same as the old things!

Well ... my blog almost died: I haven't written anything in a while. In the meantime 've almost finished with the Reiki master course (so my perspectives on what I'm doing shifted a bit yet again - as it usually happens), I've decided I'll change my motorbike (a V-strom looks tempting right now) and I havequite a few other incipient plans (that is, I'm not sure on anything else at the moment).

Either way, I'll try to post some more in the following days.

Saturday, January 12

on commenting your code

Speaking about an action and doing an action are two entirely different things. As such, whatever you say, will never change your actions (if your behaviour is reprehensible, no matter how you justify it, your behaviour is still reprehensible).

More than that, when you feel the need to justify yourself, this should tell you not that your action is just because you managed to justify it), but quite the opposite: if it actually were just, you wouldn't feel the need to justify it.

This is why I don't believe in commenting the purpose of your code.

The code should be the comments; that is, it should be self-evident what the code does, by looking at it.

There are, probably some border cases when this doesn't apply (when writing libraries you need to comment the public API for example), but usually, obscure code just tells you of poor coding style.

Adding comments to obscure code is not bettering the code; it's just a justification. As such there are some cases that you need to verify, to see if you need to revise your coding style:

Your (older) code is unclear to you. When you pass through it, you need to add comments to it, to make it clearer.

To summarize:
.A Lacking comments are not the problem; What you need to do (if the code will still need to be modified in the future) is to seriously consider refactoring it.

.B It may be that your code is clear to you, but not your coleagues. Not only is your coding style poor, you don't even know enough to realize your coding style is poor. More, you don't even know enough to feel your coding style is poor. <<GOTO .A>>

.C It may be that your code is clear to you and clear to your coleagues.
Stop deluding yourself!

Friday, January 11

favorite sentence

Well ... after choosing a couple of favorite words, I figured I might as well have a favorite sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.*

Yeah!


*: Taken from AB's status in Google Talk.

Thursday, January 10

they say time flies ...

... when you're having fun. I guess they're right, whoever "they" are.

It's a quarter past one AM, and I got home ten minutes ago. I had gotten out from work at a little past five in the afternoon, passed by the bike repair shop and then went to W's place for the reiki attunement (I'm halfway through, to Reiki master).

Then I go home, had a Reiki session with a friend of mine (here's to hoping you get better!) and then, around eleven I got out for a walk (for some reason, lately I've not been sleepy at all until way past twelve AM).

I went by C's work place and we went for a walk together when she finished her shift.

C, thanks for the conversation, time flies when you're having fun.

Tuesday, January 8

U.G. again

I started reading about U.G. again, and it has a profound effect on me (not really profound, but the most profound effect any writing had on me lately.


I realized a couple of random facts by reading about him:
First, I'm starting to know my watch. I look at it and the moment I read it I realize (somehow) that I already knew what it would show me (I knew it was 8:50 a split-second before seeing it; or O think I did - it was not a conscious thought).

Second, my blog is my misguided attempt at permanence and I hold on to it.

Here's a quote of a quote (from A Taste of Death):
"Attachment becomes a problem because of our wanting to be detached. What is wrong with attachment? Permanence: we cannot hold onto attachments forever. Knowing that, one gets onto the merry-go-round of detachment. All this looks very attractive to you because you feel that you now have the mantra which will help you cope with the aches and pains attachment brings you. Then you get attached to the concept of detachment and spend a lifetime trying to make the goal of being detached into a reality," says U.G., as I smell my early morning coffee.

from the new year

Well ... I managed to process three pictures from the new year party. I'd do some more, but it's half past one in the morning and I do need some sleep. Either way, I'll see if I can post one or two more in the following days.

A

me at the new year party

new year party (1)

Monday, January 7

responsibility, explained for geeks

Since geeks are criticized (usually by their moms :-D) for having no responsibility in their lives, I found an explanation of what responsibility actually is, geared towards geeks.

For non-geeks, this could also serve to prove that geeks can also be responsible*.


* - or not :)

Saturday, January 5

the right notation is half of the solution

I'm not sure who* created the presentation for Subtext, but he knows what he's talking about.

The presentation is interesting (enough that I thought I'd share it further) and I will definitely look for more details on it.

The project homepage is at subtextual.org.



* Later edit: The guy's name is Jonathan Edwards.

Friday, January 4

there goes a new camera

I had been planning to get a Nikon d80, for some time now. Since it's not quite cheap, I had it planned as "the big expense" for this month, and was seeing it as a new relaunch into photography (as my interest has faded a bit since I've been having problems with my current camera setup).

Either way, it won't happen, at least not this month:

Yesterday morning, while the tarmac was wet from the rain, I managed a spectacular breaking on my motorbike, sliding on the back-wheel (around 4 metres or so), followed by laying the bike down on the right side and me close to doing a follow-up slide, on my protective gear)*. Thankfully all the incoming traffic stopped and no cars hit me, but my expenses this month will be divided between holiday in Bruxelles (yeah, that still stands :D) and fixing my bike (that is, not "Bruxelles and getting a new camera").

Then again, for getting a camera, there's always the next month ... even though I was hoping to get a new computer. I'll have to choose, I guess.


* - Since I know I'll be asked, I didn't injure myself. I believe I pulled a muscle though when lifting the bike back up (it didn't hurt then, but' it was a bit uncomfortable this morning). Also, regarding technical details, the fault was that of a driver that started cutting my lane coming in from a side-road (I had priority). He was twenty metres in front of me and kept advancing slowly into my lane while looking at the cars coming from the other direction.

Whose fault it was, hardly matters though, especially as I could have gone a little slower (considering the tarmac was wet) but don't tell anyone that ;).