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comments: 0It seems as my newest creation, this site is broken in MSIE; that is, it doesn't react nicely with the object tag. Its not like I should care about it at this point, since the whole page is broken due to unwise decisions with automatic HTML insertion upon updating. But I have some interesting ideas about how to fix this entire mess that will be posted to the news soon.
Progress on JTEX has been slowed down in the past few days as I have been working on the corresponding tutorial a lot (to get it up to date) and hammering out some implementation details for python cgi. In case you haven't guessed yet, Python has quickly become my language of choice for any project I don't deem a compiled module necessary; which is most of them; and I would like to further sharpen my skills by redoing the backend to this site in python. It badly needs reorganization anyway, and the lack of features and abilities is starting to really slow down my development in other areas.
Speaking of development in other areas, while I was at a loss for what in the hell I could do a few weeks ago, I'm getting so many ideas now that I don't even know how to finish anything. In this way, my CMS becomes actually important in my life; and I find my short musings in the news section to be a life saver; or at least, an idea saver. Currently, I'm juggling a website re-write, re-design, a sizeable tutorial, a mid-sized development project in both a new language and new framework, implementation issues for MySQLdb (mysql-python), a summer class that will probably be PHP/Mysql, numerouns ideas that require writing my own XML DTD, and the creation and upkeep of a small library of packages that I find useful.
My Anjuta package (pronounced Un-Zoo-tah apparently) is now posted at linuxpackages.net, which should bring Paul's server some of the tender lovin care that he's been craving. I also submitted the bluefish package, hopefully it will be accepted (I used the same method as I did with the anjuta package), and then slackware users everywhere can enjoy the beautiful IDE's that I have been enjoying.
I was talking to Firu today about how I think that fame is the number one exterior incentive in the open source movement. People don't want money, they want name recognition. Maybe they want to help people, and I'm just a self centered twit, but I think that in some way people always want recognition for the good things they do. While I don't think that this incentive is necessarily wrong, or makes people bad, I do think that it replaces money as the incentive to strive for greatness. Or perhaps its just academic interest itself.
Needless to say, to be recognized for something always feels good; especially for me. Theres a funny thing about guy's; we don't really compliment eachother all that much; its apparently too gay. Of course, I'm too busy cracking jokes half of the time to drop a "nice job dude" or "that was so awesome man"; one could even say that me uttering these could be considered out of character; but to be told by someone "you are good" or "you are so smart", and have them mean it, really feels wierd.
It just doesn't happen in the environments that I am used too. People concentrate too much on what you don't know, not what you do know. I'm just as guilty as anyone in this respect; I remark with disdain daily about the uselessness of the common Stevens student. It seems that even some uncommonly smart Stevens students are also useless. But maybe they're only useless in the areas that I am interested in; or just maybe, to break free of my "modesty shackles", comparing most people to myself is actually unfair.
So when good friends are nice to me, it makes all of my work worthwhile. It makes up for the hundreds of over-zealous critical nitwits that I know. It makes the feverish pace at which I take in and process information (which always seems to be slower than the people I am trying to emulate) all worthwhile... satisfying that 5% of me that is not interested in academic pursuits, but wants to be acknowledged as someone who is not useless. And when an anonymous person does it, its even better.