In lieu of actually making a podcast, I’m going to list a few songs that I’ve been listening to a lot on repeat over the past couple of weeks. Because you know, I can. In no particular order

1. Fiest - Mushaboom
2. Linda Thompson - Versatile Heart
3. Richard and Linda Thompson - Dimming of the Day
4. Richard Thompson - One Door Opens
5. Jorma Kaukonen - Stars in my Crown
6. Linda Thompson - Katy Cruel
7. Kitka - Subrali Sa Se Subrali
8. Kitka - Pustono Ludo I Mlado
9. Richard Thompson - The Old Changing Way
10. La Bouttiine Souriane - Le Zigezon (The Sunspot Song)

• My comptuer was anoying all morning. On the upside I now have a new torchwood episode to watch.
• Dose anyone else know if XTorrent is particularly unstable on PowerPCs? Because it’s comically bad on my computer. I know there are other programs that I could use, my logic in using this one isn’t good admittedly. Just wondering.
• I did some playing around with R last night. I like it. I’m not sure if my failure to grok properly is the result of having a pretty elementary understanding of statistics, or the fact that I have a pretty elementary understanding of programing. Or the fact that, by all accounts the documentation seeems to be written by a non-native speaker, which might be complicating problems 1 and 2. But it’s very cool, and I sort of get it.
• I’m thinking of running some sort of basic study this spring/summer on my own using some publicly available content as data. Like newsgroup postings or some such. With the hopes of being able to understand these tools in time for next year, and hopefully I’ll get something good out of it.
• My turn to looking at these statistics programs and what not, I’ve gotten back to reading about object oriented programing and smalltalk, as it’s at least a little relevant, which I enjoy because it inspires a way of logical thinking which I don’t get to spend very much time in. And that’s inspiring in it’s own way.
• Not much knitting or writing news, alas. Still haven’t written the sleeve, and I had work and dancing last night and I have something this morning before work, so not much opportunity there, and I’ve spent what time I have writing this note to you. ;)
• No grad school news.

Onward and Upward!

It’s been days since I wrote a journal entry. This reflex to blathering about my life is a sickness.

On the up side I’ve started writing more things that are, not this kind of entry on my own, so that’s an improvement. At the same time, I’m having a hard time conceptually holding together the argument for an essay for any length of time. Maybe I’m just out of practice. Anyway, this concentration/focus/mental discipline issue is something I need to spend some time on.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not really successful at trying to write fiction at the moment; I think that I would really be displeased with the results.

I wrote a knitting pattern yesterday. For a toe-up sock. This is my basic “easy/mindless” sock, and I really like the way that it turns out, so it’s good that I’ve been able to write this sort of pattern out for the general good. I plan to do some layout/production work, and get it up on the tealArt site. Woot. There are other knitting related writing projects that I’d like to get more finished so I can queue them up.

I’ve also begun to make it possible for me to post entries to tychoish.com that won’t get cross-posed to my live-journal. I think some rants and what not are better kept off live-journal, and I think modularity is a good thing in this regard.

I just did my taxes. That was both easy and impressively uninspiring all at the same time. Feh.

I think I’m going to wait till I hear (good news) from (a) graduate school(s) to make the new computer order. It’s reasonable, it’s not that long, I don’t think I’ll regret anything. I’m really, surprisingly conflicted about this, because it feels like a luxury and not a need thing. Zoe--current computer--was a luxury as well: my mum needed a computer for work and it made sense at the time for her to take my 12" g4 iBook (which remains a very good/useable machine) and me to get the PowerBook. It wasn’t a necessary upgrade, but I had a really good justification.

Ok, I’m cutting the rest of the blather about the computer to below the fold, because, that just seems reasonable. There’s not much else for me to report, really. I’ll be in touch. You be too!

The truth is that I use a computer a lot. I’m a serious geek. But you knew that. While my other “hobbies” (reading, knitting) also require the expenditures of income, I’m really economical about them. I buy in bulk, I shop around, I don’t stash yarns, and for the last 4 months I’ve been working in a yarn store, so I get a mean discount which I will confess to not using very much (I’ve gotten, one sweater project and a skein of yarn that has made/will make 2 pairs of socks). So yeah. Frugal, and good at resisting temptation…

And the truth is that I don’t really buy other computer accessories. I may be a geek, but I’m not really a gadget person. In the time that I’ve had Zoe, I’ve spent ~175 dollars on an external hard drive. Period. So for the amount of use it gets, and the way that a(ny) computer facilitates, projects that are of prime importance to me (my work online, writing, etc.) having a more current tool wouldn’t be a bad thing. So, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. But then, you know reason and necessity aren’t exactly the same thing.

Here’s an entry where I dither on about the pros and cons of upgrading the computer system.

Mostly it’s kind of boring, except if you want to know what runs through my head when ever I make a decision of any sort.

If that’s the case, I pity you.

Pro

1. My computer is nearly 3 years old. In this time, apple has seriously revised the machines in nearly every possible way. Though most noticeably, the new processors substantially outperform the 1.67 G4 that I have a the moment
2. My old computer isn’t completely dead and will serve it’s next owner pretty well.
3. I’m still using tiger, (10.4) and I’d have to spend $129 dollars to upgrade this computer to the new operating system, which I think I’m about due for. This isn’t incredibly crucial… but if my computer were going to be useable in a long term, rather than short term way, I’d want leopard and a new battery (the current one gets $120). Even though I’m cheap, and probably wouldn’t spend the 240, this is a further justification, but then that’s what this list is about.
4. They just released new revisions today, and are unlikely to do so again till August or September. The computer I could order tomorrow, is the same as the one I could get for the next six months or so, likely at the same price. I don’t know if I want to wait that long, in any case. If I get into graduate school, I don’t think I want to be moving and upgrading in the same month (if I waited till the next release,) and if I don’t, well, uncertainty.
5. There are some things that I’ve stopped using, or avoid using because they are painfully slow to use in the current configuration. They include quicksilver, bit torrent, media (photo/sound) editing. Also, I’m pretty quick to keep unused applications off, (My base stack is: Quicksilver, Adium, TextMate, Mail.app, Safari, NetNewsWire. Sometimes I have VLC or Preview open as well. That’s it, and that works ok, but it’s limited.)
6. The new computer wouldn’t have a metal case and would therefore be better at picking up wireless signals. Grr. Ok, minor annoyance, and I have no problem picking up signals anywhere that I currently use the computer, but still, this is one of the many things that I’m looking forward to upgrading.
7. I’d be able to, with the new huge hard drive, be able to keep my music collection on my computer without crimping performance. By now, I have an 80+ gig iTunes Library, and a 100 gig hard drive. For a year, I’ve kept the iTunes library on an external hard drive.

Con

1. The old computer still works, and I really can’t imagine that there’s something new that I’d want to do with the computer that I couldn’t do with the current computer. It might not be as
2. I plan to buy a second power cord this time around, but I have three that work with my current computer, so that’s a step down in terms of features.
3. My income particularly given that I’m still waiting on The Word, is unsure. So spending 1300 dollars, given this, seems silly. The instant that I’m more sure, then this all makes a lot more sense. Making the order, now, without The Word, is probably not incredibly wise. At the same time, I’ve had the money for a new machine set aside for many months, incase there was some sort of sudden failure of the present computer. It is already in the budget for this summer, (see #4 above; this is probably the crux of my argument.)

Egad, I haven’t written one of these posts in forever.

It seems that apple released new laptops today. I promised myself that I would wait for the next revision before I got a new computer, my current one is old (a power pc generation mac) and I think it struggles to keep up. I’m still running the old OS (I have a “don’t screw it up if it’s working” policy) and I think that it’s time. Computer’s wear out, and Zoe has been a virtual dream, but I don’t want to wear her completely into the ground. My father or grandmother is going to get custody next, and I don’t want them to get stuck with a computer that’s going to die immediately.

tycho takes a break from writing this entry to look at the academic/research software in the `apple software directory <http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_science/>`_.

So here’s my updated apple prediction for the rest of the year: new iMacs at/around WWDC, iPods in August, MacPros and MacBook Air v.2 in August (or November) and new MacBook Con/Pros in November (maybe August?), so the big news at WWDC will be software related, likely as not.

As for me, I think the main decision left is, when do I make the order. Do I order it now, because, if I’m going to do it, I might as well make the order sooner rather than later (all things being equal, which they are,) or do I wait a little while. One thought is that I’ll wait till I get a grad school acceptance.¹ On the other hand, even if fI didn’t get into graduate school, I’d still want the new computer, and now is probably the best time to buy for the next six months.

In preparation for this, I’m going to start making lists of things to ease the transition process. You may find these entertaining. Anyway, despite my lack of posting I have been writing things pretty seriously all morning. So I’ll get back to that.

Onward and Upward!

I mentioned in my last post that I took a break from writing to look at the academic/research software on the apple website. I opened a bunch of tabs (I’m looking for qualitative data analysis tools and the like,) and I found a few things that were pretty interesting, opened some tabs on the promise that I’d get back to evaluate these pieces of software.

I did.

My response?

Meh.

Here’s the issue: this is a pretty small market there are maybe a dozen programs that are designed to help social scientists with the things that they do. And they all perform very different tasks. Some will run cognitive psych experiments, there are statistics packages, there are data mining tools. You get the idea. There isn’t a lot of competition.

So the end result, is that these places charge hundreds of dollars for a piece of software that is old, out of date,¹ and for the most part very proprietary.

So there’s really nothing to be done. This isn’t software that I really need at the moment, so I’m not buying anything, but it’s really frustrating that not only are there not better options, but that there are no open source options. While I’m a big proponent of Open Software, there are a lot of cases where I’m not sure that it’s entirely necessary. Or, at least in cases where there’s enough competition to support a number of viable options.

He said, looking at his list of running applications and realized that indeed, most of them were open source applications.

So maybe, then, open source is the way to spur development in areas too small for proprietary models to really work--such as they do. In any case, I do think that there’s a big difference between big open source projects like Linux or Mozillia and smaller projects like R-Project. Maybe it’s just me but I think that having free/open software options for research is more crucial than having free/open operating systems. I’m so going to get filleted for that one, I understand that you can’t have the former without the later, but we can have this fight later, if people really want to have it. The short story is niche/not obviously profitable products/projects need to be open source (like server operating systems, like research software), and if apple is any indication user-level operating systems don’t.

Ok, Done ranting.

And then I did some more serious googling. This, program, TAMS Analyzer for OS X came up, it’s GPL-ed and I’m going to spend some time playing with it to see what I can make it do. But it’s awesome looking. I’m putting tinkering wit this on the todo list.

I suppose I should explain my blog post titles more clearly. Usually I write my “here’s whats up with tycho,” posts at the beginning of the day. Today I didn’t. So today, we’re doing it after words. Latin-ate-ly

In no particular order:

• I did work today on the new TealArt. I did everything that I could reasonably be expected to do given the results I was getting. I still don’t have the feed working correctly (it’s a permalink issue, support request is out,) and once that gets done, I think I’m going to be very done with the site.
• I joked with dave that when I made it big, I’d higher a web-developer/designer, to make something a little more appropriate for the site. It won’t before a while, and I think what I have right now is plenty good, but… I’ll probably be good for a while, and I can keep tinkering with it, but it’s good to not fixate on the little details at the expense of doing the work that’s important.
• My thought is that TealArt will eventually be a sort of “boutique blog network.” I hope to have a dozen or so blogs (maintained by groups of people,) on a series of semi-related topics. My thought is that the site would be a sort of “harpers meets women’s day from the late 70s” for geeks. We’d do fiction and columns (journals/blogs) and patterns/projects/resources, and see where it goes from there. This follows in the vein of tealart-as-magazine, and while I have to hone and polish, I think it’s a good start.
• The other thing that I did today with regards to tealart, was that I began planning out content. If it’s a magazine with a regular publishing schedule, it was helpful to think about copy that I need to generate, and this was a good move forward, for the important part of the site (ie. not the code).
• I didn’t write this post this morning because I was busy grafting the toe of a sock. This is the first time that I’ve ever managed to graft as sock and have it work out. I’m enjoying this sock making, and I haven’t yet ripped out the sleeve that needs ripping. So I’m not actively working on sweaters at the moment, though I will be again soon. I also have a desire to make a pair of gloves, again.
• This sock is knit cuff down. I haven’t done a sock like this, in probably two and a half years. They fit really well, and I like all of the nice ribbing. Not that you can’t make ribbed socks in the other direction, but the ribbing has to start later or look funny, thought this is really just an artifact of me being particular about the way my socks look.
• I’ve been listening to Fiest’s “Mushaboom,” which I’m enjoying more than I really care to admit. This reminds me that I need to sync my ipod with some desperation.
• I’m feeling, on the whole, more sane. Just a few more days. I’ve not worked more than a 10 hours in a week in far too long. (A month? Six weeks?) While this would have been a nice opportunity, given the craziness that this time of year seems to produce, it wasn’t as productive as I might have hoped. Such is life. Once I’m at a point where I have both sanity and certainty in my life, I can move the whole “deal with employment issues,” off the back burner and do something. In anycase, I have tomorrow off to begin to continue working on my projects, and begin to think about this.
• I got metioned by someone on ravelry in a really good context. I need to spiff things up on my profile there like no other. But I’ll have to just add that to the big todo list.

Ok, that seems like enough for now. I have a few more hours of writing-related things on my list for today, so I’ll get on with that.

R: So, I had a date, it was nice.

T: Oh? Good for you! What’s his story?

R: He’s a classmate. And he’s cute!

T: Cute?

R (picture link; has two guys on it): The one on the right.

T: Um. Ours or theirs.

R: Ours, dumbshit. That’s the only system that makes sense.

T: I know, right? But the other guy is cuter, so I just wanted to make sure.

R: Whatever, asshole.

pause

T (looks at picture, again): Oh, that’s right you used to have a crush on me--

R: heh. shutup.

T: --which means, we have totally different standards for cute.

R: you’re welcome.