While I was lying in bed on Sunday morning attempting to get some sleep, despite the heat of the new day, I got to thinking about the previous night, and by extension, the rest of good old 2003. Now usually I don't go into these thoughts, as you should well know by now, because of well, let's just say, it's not my kind of thing to make them public. However I stumbled on to this link:
Alpha Male Lessons, and somewhere in the middle there, something wondered what would happen if I said something. Not a pretty result I suspect, but here it is if you dare.
So where do we begin, well if it's 2003 we're talking about then it's prolly a long walk home from town with Ben and Leland. Not unrewarding in its own way, but a sign of the times, I guess. Jusr looking back through my email, many things have happened to the people around me, some bad, but most good. It has been moreover a year for comings and goings, sometimes by the same people. In short, stuff happened.
Now here's where it get's personal, because, like 2002 and maybe even before, 2003 hasn't really been a "me" year, these things have happened to other people, and I've stood by and at best done my little bit to help, and at worse, gone "huh". Thinking about it there's a lot of the "huh", which to me is a little sad. For various reasons, I began the year in kind of a bad place, a place where I was pretty much unsure of myself, and I leave the year in a similar place really, okay, prolly not such of a bad place, but still, a somewhat crazy place.
Now the thing is, I think this year I've actually tried a bit harder to understand other people, both in their view of me, (which was kind of the point) and in other respects. There's not much of a result to speak of. I don't think I really know most of the people around me any better than when I started. No doubt, I've passed up many oportunities on the way to know people better, and perhaps even stuffed a few up.
So as you can see, there's not really anyone else to blame for this, after all I got myself into this mess, and I'm the only one who sees it at all, and in the end, it's not like it's that bad, but still, to me, this year has been a bit of a struggle.
In the end, I'd like to conclude with many thanks to those who've been there for me, those who've challenged my view, those who've took the time to discuss things with me, and of course just those that have been there, and come up with all sorts of things for me to do, rather than sitting at home, or work.
And that's about it. Sorry, no dirt, no baseless insults, just a few semi-coherent rantings all about me. It would be nice if this prompted some sort of reponse... (anything would make a nice change from the Paris Hilton spam my mailbox, seems to attracted lately)
So with that, we'll return this blog to it's regularly scheduled inactivity.
Well, selected people got older and decided to celebrate the fact, which was good. Said people and others got all dressed up, for they had somewhere to go. Unfortunately (I think), there was no camera there to record the scene for posterity.
In any case, it was a wonderfully warm night, and the party spilled over into a delightfully empty (other than us) park. Which was good. So big thanks go out to Ben and James for having the fortune to being born in the lazy hazy crazy days of summer, and of course for organising the thing.
And while we were partying up large at home, it seems there was reason to celebrate abroad, as the news of the
capture of Saddam Hussein spread. And with the news came, as was probably expected, a large amount of bickering back and forward amongst the american political blogosphere on what this all means for both the situation in Iraq, and GWB's chances of re-election at home. Oh, and I loved this quote from the BBC's "Bush's Boost/Bounce" bulletin:
If the White House is able to maintain the sense that it is in control, it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to persuade Americans that Mr Bush should be removed.
Yet another quick update.
Once again I haven't posted for an age.
And unlike Ben, I don't have masses of pages of closely spaced text to enthrall you with, so you'll have to make do with a mere 'graph or two. What's more I can't even directly link to that story as his permalinks don't seem to be working too well.
Nifty web design ideas
I've been meaning to redesign these humble pages for a while now, but it doesn't seem to be happening very quickly. So instead I'll let you in on some of the current tricks of the trade.
Jason Kottke's latest MT design seems pretty neat. I like the idea of using different styles to differential between the types of post. Of course to do that you'd have to have differently styles of posts, rather than just ones similar to "I can't be bothered actually saying much, so here are a whole bunch of vaguely described links, that a certain someone seems to post.
A list apart demonstates some of the things you can do with styles in the modern browsers. I particularly like the sliding-door button styling.
Finally there was a nifty text zoomer on Boingboing a while back (although not so long that it's off there front page yet!
All over the place
I went to Punikaiki again, a few weeks ago. It seems that just about everytime I go to the coast I end up going by there, which is odd, because I hadn't actually been there at all until about two years ago or so. This time we stayed at Te Nikau Retreat which was very nice.
I've been pretty busy at work, as we're trying to release a product before Xmas, but it's better to get it done rather than have it drag on.
I found an article on geek stereotypes fallacies the other day. Kind of interesting. It didn't get such a get reception on MetaFilter though.
Also, Scott Miller's new blog has a nice article on how the computer game industry is similar to the music industy, a bit depressing if that's something you would like to do.
And last but not least a couple of "serious book" reviews. Firstly, Grist magazine's examination of 'The Skeptical Environmentalist', which presents a critical analysis of Bjorn Lomborg's rather biased take on the world environment. Secondly, Simon Blackburn takes a balanced look at Richard Dawkins' latest.