Computers. Why do they cause such angst?

This essay, over at American Digest humorously catalogs the issues with today’s operating systems and software packages. The conclusion is that what consumers really want is an appliance, not this crazy monstrosity that is a modern computer. In the comments, I mentioned Stephenson’s essay In the Beginning Was the Command Line Interface, but this was meant more to poke the various Mac fanboys in the comments.
But coming back later, I noticed that someone said that the history of computers is not really relevant, and someone else complained that computers act like jack-of-all-trades. That woke me up like a slap in the face. I did not even flinch at the comment saying that Linux should provide a warranty (which only goes to show that people don’t understand what the open-source development model is; Eric S. Raymond’s essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar explains this idea better than I could). I think that the history of computers is fundamental to understanding the problem with the personal computer. Of course a computer does so much! Remember that the digital computer was designed, to borrow a metaphor from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, along the lines of a pipe-organ, which can be reconfigured to make many types of sounds. Think of the incredible capacity for logic bound up in the theories behind computer science! The history of computers reveals that many false assumptions are made about how these things work, and I think that we would be foolish to ignore at least 40 years (not twenty) of computer history (not just of personal computers).
For the orignal poster’s problem, I think that some compromise between a modern cellphone interface and the power of a personal computer will emerge, that will deal with all the distractions and cruft of the current PC. Maybe I will design this, if I ever stop fooling around blogging, finish my college applications, and get to work designing this new interface while working on my computer science major. For everyone else, the history of computers is important for fixing the faulty metaphors of our current computer interfaces.
Anyway, I should get ready for relatives, and I seem to have lost my train of thought somewhere in this post. I hope you can see through this muddle to the point that seemed so clear and shining in my head only minutes ago.

Oh, right.

I forgot to mention that my last high school cross country season ended about a week and half ago. Neither of our boys’ teams did very well in the championship, but that makes sense: our really good runners graduated last year. Personally, I think I did well; I got a chance to run in the championship race for the first time, and gave a decent showing, I believe, for my fourth year of running. Anyway, it is over now; I am not a good enough runner to be on a competitive college team, so any running I do will be for the sake of fitness. I don’t have any regrets: running cross country is physically difficult, the simultaneously exhilarating and heartbreaking aspects of a cross country race have become too much for me, and I am glad to be done with those bizarre feelings that surround a cross country race.

Gmail themes?

So I hear that Gmail has got themes now. Lifehacker has more information, and pictures. I’m still waiting for my account to get this, and I have a sinking suspicion that I will be in one of the last groups of the roll out. Oh well.

Update:
Ok, now I have themes. Awesome.

It’s been a while…

…since I last blogged. I’ve had a long and busy term, trying to stay on top of my classes while getting through the arduous college process. Well, it is now exam week, and I’m almost done with the trimester. Then it is thanksgiving break, and I can use the time to finish those college essays. Once those applications are in, I’m basically done. By January, I will have to be done, and then I can get back to everything that is interesting. I’ll even be able to rant about politics again over at my other blog. In the mean time, I’m going to try to commit to light blogging (as opposed to none at all).

Linking things for fun and etc.

So, a KDE developer called out to people on planet KDE to put a link to a site of his for an SEO class. Here is the link: Abalastow Compendium. Yes, it is an odd phrase. Apparently, it had not hits on google before now, but the linked site should reach the top of the hits, or so kyle hopes. Wish him luck!

Ouch, My Arm!

I ran at the Westminister Invitational cross country race yesterday, and fell going downhill, after the first mile. Finished the race with scrapes all along right side (hand, elbow, side of chest, lower leg), bleeding. Understandably messed up my race.
On an unrelated note, I’ve been wondering about inverses of recursively defined functions. Hmm.

Woah. That went by fast.

I just realized I haven’t posted in a while, so I figured I might explain what has been going on. These weeks just shot by. It hasn’t been a very good passing, either. Had nasty cold since last wednesday. Well, might as well catalog the full experience.

• Classes have been hard. I’ve got three AP level classes: Latin, Physics, AB Calculus. All are interesting, but difficult classes.
• The training I did for cross country over the summer seems to have payed off. I’ve been running near the front, and I hope to have a good run on this coming Wednesday’s race. However…
• last Wednesday, I got hit by a nasty cold that has been going around campus. I haven’t been able to run for three days because of it.
• College stuff is still bugging me. However, my list is starting to resolve itself. I’m shooting to bring it down to a 10 college list, with the majority of them using the Common Application. I also need to study some chemistry for the SAT subject tests in October.

So that is what I’ve been up to. Obviously, I have had no time to do any sort of coding work, which sucks. Anyway, I’ve got to get to class.

Oh wow…

(Warning. Attempt by an INTJ to understand own feelings follows.)
…
So I am back at school. Classes begin on Monday. I have a swamp of college stuff I have to get done soon; that stuff is some really intense work. I’m running cross country again (and really feeling the soreness). I’m kind of waiting for more of my buddies to get back, and I’m bored. I want to get my coding projects done, but I’m not in the right state of mind that got me writing all that code last week. I need to get in touch with a bunch of people, but that just intimidates me. So, with all of this stress and worry, I feel happy, in a sort of crazy, excited way. Why?
…
Well, I should probably work on some backup stuff later, before I go to bed. Maybe that will help.

Test Driven Development (Conjure and Ruby. Flash?)

So. Conjure is coming along slowly. The stranger aspects of the template settings class are working now, according the the testing I have done. I have been trying to work in the test driven development workflow. I can see why it is a good idea, it just takes a bit of time to really get used to. The hard part has been forcing myself to write the test first every time. A mental shift like that is never easy.
Unit testing is easy in Ruby because of Test::Unit. I’m not sure that there is a similar system in Flash for such unit testing, and if not, I will probably develop one myself. Yes, I know that I should be working on an object information dumper for Jesse Freeman, but seriously, a unit testing system is probably better in the long run. And of course, I need to finish Conjure, because it will be awesome.

Status of Projects

Flash object info dumper: having a bit of trouble. I’m stuck; I cannot figure out how to use a string naming a variable of an object and getting the value out of it. I thought that the variables could be accessed as in an associative array, but that is not the case. Also, getting at the properties of an associative array cannot be done through the describeType() method. So I would very much appreciate some advice towards doing this; then I will be not far from finishing this project.

I have started another project, called Conjure (for now). It generates files (and directory hierarchies) from templates, and it uses various means to get information. Hopefully, I’ll have enough code put together soon that I’ll feel ready to put it up somewhere. I may even try to explain the idea better tomorrow.
UPDATE: I just realized, I forgot to mention that Conjure is written in Ruby. A very important bit of info. Also, I am trying out test-based development.