露出した仲の良い恋人同士

The sweetheart where the relations which it exposes are good

[i love the Translate widget — give it a phrase in English, translate it to another language, and then translate that translation back into English; what fun!

C++ is calling, so i'd better get to it.

ciao, peeps.]

Live in today!

today is the birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson, i discovered when i went to the Writer's Almanac page.  and there i pulled some good quotes:  "Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air."  (which i feel is a fab way to go about life.)

and this is an even better overall approach to living:  "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

and yesterday i "discovered" an entire Boston album that i'd never heard, 'Corporate America'.  i say 'discovered', but it was actually sitting on one of my hard drives, in the compressed FLAC format.  i guess i acquired it in the murky past, and it sat waiting patiently for me to get around to it.  a good reminder to me to keep up with my data!

happy weekend, peeps!

favorite food update

remember how i used to say that if i were trapped on a deserted island with only one food, that one food would be peanuts?  OK, time for an update.  along with the peanuts (or peanut butter, if it's the good kind, made only from roasted & salted peanuts), i would like to add nutella — ah, nutella, n u t e l l a,  n  u  t  e  l  l  a . . . that yummy hazelnut spread, which my fantastic fiancée re-introduced to me recently.

(i'd need about a million jars of it, with as many of peanut butter, on that deserted island.)

right now i'm sitting on the couch eating peanut butter & nutella, and i could not be any more gastronomically pleased.

yum!

What will you do when . . .

When a hand reaches up from the comic book page, will you take it?

Will you take the chance when it comes?

Or will you play it safe and let it go?

You decide, every time.

Good luck.

Go!

ah . . . Groton

walked from where Sandi works into town to the Main Street Café.  found a comfy chair near a plug; now coffee & computer & Kindle, and lunch later — life is good.  hips a little sore from the walk, but just the usual.

the rain is done for the week, at least according to the forecast; and the sun is back in command.  feels like summer instead of spring, but i'm not complaining!  :-D

love the atmosphere here, small-townish and quiet.  no commuter rail station in town, but it's on the Nashua River Trail that connects Ayer, Groton, Pepperell, & Dunstable and there's a station in Ayer less than four miles away.

http://mainstreetcafegroton.com/

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/northeast/nash.htm

OK, i'm a slacker . . .

hmmm, so much for my blog entry every day.  oh well, it was worth a shot; i'll just have to do what i can.

did odds & ends today:
• transplanted four baby apple trees into transitional containers (i.e., re-used hummus containers with holes cut in the bottoms) and a fifth (slightly older) into a regular pot.  more mouths to feed.  :-)
• finally got around to watching 'Highlander' this afternoon.  fun, but not my favorite — it had its moments, but probably won't watch it again for a long time.
• and baked a loaf of bread, too.  yum!

brought the baby apple trees outside for a little while this morning, in the brief sunshine we enjoyed; it's raining out now (and we need it).  time to make dinner . . . .

naughty bits

heh, did some digging and found free downloads of some naughty bits i've been looking for (which aren't commercially available anymore).  part of success is not clicking on the wrong buttons at certain-stuff-is-free-(but-most-you-pay-for) sites and having a lot of patience.  meaningless, but fun.

watched some of Ken Burns's 'Mark Twain' film today:  thoughtful but sad stuff.  Twain's stuff is some of my favorite.

errant ants are coming into our apartment — the poor guys, they're just lost.

also looking through some old pictures (that were backed up on extra space on the Mark Twain discs).  ten years ago seems like such a long time ago . . . .

more fun with C++

yay, i've maybe found a good open-source C++ library (and community) to work with — Cinder!

http://libcinder.org

the beauty of a good library is not having to start from scratch, but being able to jump right in with tested & functioning features for my programs.  i had been thinking of doing the graphic stuff in Java, since i can make Java calls from C++ in UNIX; but i'd much rather be able to use (and carefully modify, if needed) pre-made stuff.

that's what i liked about Java — it has a wicked good library of nearly everything i'd want; the main problem is that Java is too slow.  Java is great for quick & dirty internet stuff, but i want dedicated high-speed stuff.  if i were a (hugely) better programmer, i could do it all from C; but let's be realistic. C++ is a good compromise.

and open-source is good because i want to get into the nitty-gritty stuff and mess around with it if i so choose.

wish me happy coding . . . .

forgot yesterday — maybe a gimme after my b-day?

arg; so yesterday i forgot to blog; maybe two entries for today.  as far as i got yesterday was to post a quote-of-the-day from Ender on Facebook:

‎ 

---

 

[from Ender's QOTD 2012-04-24:]

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory,
or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between
what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go
to find out what you need to know; and its knowing how to use
the information you get.
-- William Feather, US Author

[thank you, as always, Ender!]

 

---

 

today i made the major accomplishment (for my limited skills) of getting past the 'Stairway to Heaven' section of X-Blades on the PS3.  playing that game inspires me to program:  "Ayumi is yummy!" is my slogan, and i'd love to write her in C++ as a red-head!  another difficult task on my impossible stack.  :-D

back to the grind . . . .

Happy 30th birthday to me! (in base 14)

made good time riding to Nashoba Brook Bakery this morning:  just about an hour from our apartment, and not bad for an old man.

and speaking of my not being much of a family man, i found out yesterday that my own brother declined to be Best Man in my own wedding next April.  oh well, such is life.  maybe we'll have a smaller ceremony than originally planned, with just a few of our closest peeps.  plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

glad the warm half of the year is upon us; i'm happy to bask in the coming summer warmth.

enjoy the day!

waiting to go to Jennifer's wedding

ugh, i'm not a big fan of getting dressed up.  a nice shirt and a jacket, sure; long pants, no chance.  if you don't want me to wear shorts to a wedding, schedule it before the spring equinox.  (the only exception to this being my own wedding, in which case i'm willing to make an exception — though it's to be 13 April 2013, so it shouldn't be exactly sweltering out.  ;-)

i have 8 nieces and nephews on my mother's side, and 1 nephew on my father's side; and this is the first wedding i've been able to attend so far for any of them.  (not that they've all been married — i think that this is only the fourth so far, but i'm not sure.)   they're all not that much younger than i, and we're not at all close anymore (if we ever were).  oh well, i guess i'm not a big family person.

thinking about going back for a post-bac Computer Science minor starting this fall.  ordered books from Amazon (one paper and one for my Kindle) to get an early start at it this summer.  been looking at 50cc motor scooters too, to get to the train station to take me to Tufts.  something constructive to do.  being with Sandi makes it easier to think about.

ciao!

Friday night

tonight i am, as my father would have said, bacching it (pronounced "batching it"), as Sandi is off on a knitting retreat.  i'm parked in an easy-chair right in front of the HD TV (with a beer close at hand).

watched Resident Evil earlier, and now watching PBS Newshour and looking at graduate programs in computer science.  i guess the Tufts University post-bachelor's CS minor is still the most appropriate for me; maybe it's time for a motor scooter to get me to the train into Boston this fall.  who knows.

would be nice, though.  i would enjoy some Tufts classes.  would keep me off the streets.  :-D

1つのI愛

the nest-building bird is at it again, very industriously; he seems to be enjoying it, despite the rain.

watching Tomb Raider, just for some background amusement — a prelude (or accompaniment) to writing algorithms.

got a fab Cornell sweatshirt last night from my Sandi; she's such a dear.  i'm the most fortunate sentient in this sector of the galaxy.

ciao for now, peeps . . . .

Happy Anniversary!

It's been nine months today since Sandi and i met, and they've been the happiest months of my life.

We've moved to a beautiful apartment in the Massachusetts wilderlands outside of 495.  I had the privilege of taking a class with Dan Dennett at Tufts University this past fall, and i'm continuing my work on computational consciousness.  (See the picture of my new workspace!)  And Sandi quit a stressful dead-end job and went to work somewhere with great camaraderie and advancement potential.

Our wedding will be next April, and we can hardly wait — yay us!

Happy spring to everyone!