Work is for the birds

This is what I saw coming in to work this morning.



Not something I'm used to seeing.

In other news, my listed goals below aren't making much progress. Part of me wants to claim that being a father is, at least partly, to blame. Getting everyone settled for the evening is very tiring. A more... grown up? part of me says this is nonsense and I just need to put nose to stone and crank. Not sure which me I like better. Either way I'm making miniscule progress on goal 4, and goal 1 seems to be progressing well enough. Take this as evidence.

Goal 2 is, I think, an important habit I need to develop. I've been blogging and blogging is one of the lines on my chart. Yet my chart remains largely empty. Go figure. To be fair, as long as the proposed productivity is occurring then the chart is largely meaningless except as a petty drip-fed neurochemical trigger. Still, if I can't get in the habit of using it then it comes down entirely to self discipline which isn't something that is constant in my life. I suspect I'll need that petty drip feed when discipline ebbs. At any rate, I've got CLISP installed. Next step on goal 4 is setting up a GIT repo for the code (which will involve digging up my long unused GIT credentials and refamiliarizing myself with it) and then plowing into it.

I nearly set up a Lisp IDE in Eclipse but I couildn't get it all to install and integrate cleanly. Considering I really know buggerall about Eclipse to begin with that probably wasn't the best first step. I'll be using Ultraedit and setting up a script or action or whatever UE calls it to run the interpreter from a CLI window. Maybe I'll dig into Eclipse/CUSP/SBCL et al and make them all play nice together later when/if I'm entrenched in Lisp. Or better yet maybe Light Table will be available by then. At the current rate of progress it may well be 2.0 :P

Oh. And tinkering with the blog's template/layout/&etc is blasted time consuming. Going to have to play with it later.

More on the Question of Evil

In The debatable nature of God I considered the nature of the 3 'omnis' as applied to God. Going back and re-reading it the logic doesn't hold up very well. How could an omnigood God predispose His creation to failure and evil? How could the concept of evil even possibly exist in the creation of an omnigood entity? If, as I understand God, He is constitutionally incapable of condoning, experiencing, or contemplating evil?



However God exists at a different scale from humanity. Perhaps, for Him, the short term existence of evil in Creation isn't a paradox against His nature since, as discussed in the linked post, He has balanced it all against Jesus, against Himself. Then there's promise of the cleansing at the end of things. So you could balance it against metaphysical scales or time scales. In either case you have a net 0 change in the 'quantity' of evil in existence. I'm falling back on quantitative verbiage but who can really measure these things? I merely record a refinement to the aforementioned theory.

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Semi-Random tangent: I'm also led to wonder, just how does God interact with evil? Does He see evil? Presumably, or else most of Creation would be blank to Him. (I almost used the verb 'witness' instead of 'see' but that verb has other very serious connotations) Which doesn't really make sense. But seeing evil is, in part, experiencing it or having contact with it. Perhaps it is Jesus that sees evil. But all of that consideration will have to go into another post. This one is on another topic.

I hate titles, don't you?

Need to get speech to text integrated with Blogger on Android. Preferably one that works while I'm driving. In short, accuracy against noise which I know is probably asking a lot in the sound analysis department. I swear I had something interesting I wanted to record but it's purely fled my brain. Yes yes, built-in blogger functions and all. But it's dreadfully inaccurate. I suppose I just have to live with it.

While I'm on the topic, I also need a text to speech (AKA speech synthesis, apparently) app that'll read any app I feel like running from my phone. I'd dearly like to be able to listen to PDFs, random eBook readers, and clipped articles out of Evernote. I'd even more dearly like to be able to do this without using a different T2S for each underlying text app or having to jigger with an interface to move on to the next note/article/book/etc since, you know, I'll be driving and thus not playing with my phone.

I know. I ask for a lot.


Edit: It seems that the T2S app I want doesn't exist. Largely because the TTS service has to be enabled by the app providing the text. While it's possible I could use the accessibility option and the browser to get it done that's hardly ideal. Or perhaps there's a browser or RSS reader with builtin TTS support. Still not really ideal, and neither of those provide PDF or multi-format eBook reading. And at that point we've crossed the 'different solution for every possibility' barrier. What a mess. Makes me want to dive into mobile development. Agh, what am I thinking?

Note: T2S is shorthand for Text to Speech. TTS is the Android service supporting T2S functions. Subtleties abound.

Tuesday, back to work

Whoops. I missed a day.



So I'm not terribly productive this morning. I blame the long weekend. Two things I've been considering purchasing for the last 15 minutes.



Light Table

A BT headset



I really like the way Light Table is looking. I really need a headset. Honest, need.

Right. Work. I'm going to try for a meatier post later since this doesn't really fit the description in my opinion.

Memorial day weekend

Spent yesterday driving to Cairo. Spent today snapping beans and working on a fence. Got holes dug and posts cut and next to the holes. That's a lot of work.

Arguments

Women do not know how to conduct an argument.

¿Smartphones? Part 2

I need a new conditional operator.
Android > Blackberry simply isn't sufficient.

(some random, generic, inspiring phrase)

Right.



I really should have listened a number of years ago when Lorenzo pointed Joel's blog out.

Then again, my life is quite a string of 'should've listened's starting from about my freshman year in high school. So what does one do. Start when you can, which in this case is now.



Start how you can, which in this case is what I'm doing. Past is past.






Onward.





But first, a plan. Staccato bursts of text it is because right now I simply can't be arsed to do better.

Goal 1: Daily blog. Meaty? No! But something. Even if it's just a basic journal kind of rotgut.

Goal 2: I've got a blasted calendar hanging beside my desk. Just waiting for me to draw a chain on it.



Once again, right now I can't be bothered to properly do the hyperlinks. Maybe I'll come back and fix it. So. The calendar. Chain #1 is going to be the blogging. Maybe by the time Udacity starts the next session I'll be chained up enough to make that chain 2, or possibly 3 if I take to this productiveness thing.



Goal 3: Prime Directive: Haha, not so lofty as that. However it belongs above #1 but I'm loathe to adjust the numbering now. Digression aside, less videogame time. Damnit Grady, it's eating your life. You know it. You knock it down and it rises back up. Discipline, which you also know but have a tendency to exercise only spottily. So. Get to it. It's in print (haha, but close enough) now. Back to easier goals...



Goal 3: Bible study. Just do it. Blog it if you've nothing better to blog, in fact. Daily study is good for you.

Goal 4: Lisp. Start with the book and then move on to goal 5.

Goal 5: Write the Seinfeld calendar as a web app in Lisp. Make it swishy. Then use it. Include accountability functionality. You know what I'm talking about. Link it into Twit'Book and any other social gimmickery looks appealing.

Goal 6: That other accountability app that's been staring you in the face for 4 years or so. Except hopefully by the time you get here you'll be productive enough to make something of the idea.