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 . . . .