Archive for November, 2006

It is like I have a peripatetic mind

Posted in Lifeon Nov 15, 2006

The rain slowed down today, and some sunshine came though my window blinds this morning which was a really nice change. But more than a few rays though my window, are the many rays of goodness in my life. Special shout out to Lillian who left a comment on my last post.

I went to institute tonight, and it was really good. We were studying from D&C 42:6 where it says, “Declaring my word like unto angels of God,” which makes me think, “How do angels declare the word of God, and how can we emulate it?” We also talked briefly about verse 21: “Thou shalt not lie,” which reminded me of a previous post about how the worst lies can be the ones we tell ourselves.

I’ve been reading some blogs, and I’m wondering why people don’t seem to care about capitalization and punctuation. It doesn’t seem like it is that hard to get it right.

I think there is something about bread which demands chocolate. Nutella is some of the best stuff on Earth, but when I don’t have any, chocolate milk is the beverage of choice when eating bread and butter.

I have a test coming up in my physics class Monday, so I’m going to be studying my brains out this week.

Speaking of brains, I watched the new NBC show 3lbs tonight, and I’m glad that they didn’t kill off the little girl, because I would have been mad.

Yesterday I launched my first open source project. It is actually a really small project, and will probably stay permanently in I-mode development. I published it under the LGPL license, because the code base I started with used that license.

The project is just a simple little plugin for Wordpress which displayed related links for religious subject matters.

Update: Unfortunately, the backend which drived this plugin is gone, so this project has been discontinued.

A congeries of different thoughts

Posted in Lifeon Nov 12, 2006

Sometimes I struggle between the part of me which wants to be a nerd and the part of my that can’t stand anything nerdy. I’m not really even sure what nerd means, but I know that different applications of the word bring about different responses from me.

I ate too much apple pie today. The Sara Lee pies have been on sale for $1.98 each (no sales tax) so I’ve been eating way too much pie as of late. This is my first pie though in over a week, so I think maybe I’m doing ok now.

I think I make a big deal over small things. For example, this week I created a new homepage for myself, whatever that means. I’m not even sure if I would want to call it a homepage, but I created it. Initially it was just something small, a quick 20 minute project. But then I wanted to make it better, then more colorful, then I wanted more functionality out of it, then I wanted to make it good enough for other people to use, then I wanted to tweak some of the values, then blah blah blah. I made a big deal about it.

Have you ever wondered if there were an exact copy of yourself, personality and everything, if you would love your copy or be annoyed by it? Would someone who thinks they are always right always argue with his copy? I think that if this were to happen, and I had a copy, I could see tons of stuff that I would hate about myself that otherwise I can’t see in myself.

One of the things that I thought when I moved to Oregon is that I would fit in socially better, and I’m still finding it difficult. I’m not sure if it is because I’m still the new kid, or that the average age of my peers is older, or if I’m just being stupid. Maybe I’m just a nerd and people here don’t want to be around me. I really felt comfortable socially in Provo; I felt like I was on top of the game. Maybe I’ve lost it though, and when I move back to Provo I’ll find it hard to have friends.

Mmm, a slice of apple pie right before bed wouldn’t kill me would it?

Sometimes I struggle with not being married, but sometimes I’m ok with it. I guess maybe what it is is that I’m ok with not being married right now, but I don’t like the idea of being single in the future. For about the last three or four years I was told that “it was my year.” I’m ok with the fact that last year wasn’t my year, or that this year may not be my year either, and I’ll continue to be fine with it as long as my year comes sometime this decade.

Maybe I’m getting a little too personal here and I should be typing all of this in my secret blog. But I’ve also had the thought that I’ve been way to formal or serious on my blog recently, so I’m not really sure what I should type where. In the shower tonight I considered creating yet another blog where I would write all the boring or serious stuff, like politics, sports, and reviews, so I can use this blog more for this personal type of stuff.

Well, I have to teach Sunday School tomorrow, and while my lesson is mostly prepared already, if I don’t get some good sleep tonight, then I’m not going to think clearly enough to be able to make my lesson interesting. So I’m hitting the collection of springs and padding which is commonly called a bed.

On my technical blog, I talked about aggregating search results with OpenSearch. Below is a religious case example for use of the OpenSearch technology. (You should read what I’ve written about OpenSearch before continuing to read this.)

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The rise of RSS and Atom feeds brought increased usage of the word, aggregate, which meant to gather many articles together to one destination. This turns out to be a really great thing. No longer do I have to go from site to site to check on all my favorite news. I can use an aggregator, and bring all the news from all my favorite sites together to one point. Not only can I do this with news, but also blog posts, photos, audio clips, events, alerts, and the list goes on.
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Present news, not possibilities

Posted in Generalon Nov 10, 2006

Almost two months ago, James Chasse Jr. died during an arrest by Portland Police. The situation is somewhat controversial because some eye witnesses claim that the police officers used excessive force, however a grand jury ruling exonerated the officers of criminal wrongdoing. But the controversy isn’t the subject of this post.

Recently the police reports of the incident were released, and KOIN 6 News was reporting on what they said. The news station said that the police accounts of what happened were inconsistent with accounts of bystanders. The story ended with Jeff Gianola saying, “Another possibility is that police understated their reports.”

Wow. To me saying that “police understated their reports” is just one step away from calling them liars. A major news station making such accusations is inappropriate. They should present the news and the facts, but not the possibilities of what could have happened, especially when such possibilities come close to calling our public servants liars.

Michael Reed receptionBYU football seemed unstoppable tonight with their 55-7 win over Wyoming tonight. Both teams had the midas touch: BYU turning everything to gold and Wyoming turning everything to mufflers.

BYU turned things up a few degrees showing that they are indeed a top 25 team. BYU did more during the first half of play than many teams hope for in a full fame. By the time the teams walked into the locker room at half time, BYU held a 31-0 lead; especially impressive as Wyoming hasn’t scored 31 points in any half of any game this year, and only scored more than 31 points total in two games this year. Fortunately, Wyoming couldn’t mount any sort of comeback, only scoring once in the final few minutes of the game.

Particularly spectacular was the first drive of the game which started with a 84 yard kickoff return that almost was returned for a touchdown. Also great was the 77 yard punt return by McKay Jacobson that was returned for BYU’s last touchdown of the game.

With the win, BYU improves to 8-2, 6-0 MWC. The win guarantees BYU at least a share of the conference title, and almost certainly a trip to the Las Vegas bowl.

BYU gets the weekend off before facing New Mexico at home on the 18th. If BYU wins that game, they will have won the conference title outright. The Mountain West Conference Commissioner will be on hand to present the championship trophy should the Cougars win.


Status Updates

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Converted all my SSL apps to Google App Engine. I didn't want to have to pay for my own SSL certificate any more, and App Engine allows for SSL sites with valid and recognized certificates (on their appspot.com domain) for free.
Mar 18, 2010
  • Jacob BYU won their first round game! I'm not sure what to do, this has never happened to me before. Mar 18, 2010
  • 20T? I don't know if I can take any more Mar 18, 2010
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