Apert

• I've been working on various projects but none of them is to the point of being documentable. But I feel like I should update my blog so it doesn't look like I'm dead. So...here I am. I'm a Montharian. (For explanation of this and the post title, see next item)


• I'm "reading" Anathem and it's really great so far. I "read" The Name of the Rose a few months ago and had the idea of scientific monastics then, so I'm a little cheesed off that Stephenson beat me to the punch (not that I was going to write a book, but now I can't talk about how cool it would be without sounding like a fanboi). I've seen some complaints about the made-up words, but I don't think that's really fair. For one thing, a lot of the words like "fraa" and "reticule" aren't made up, they are just less common. For another, shut up.


• Is it just me, or is the YouTube subscription system completely broken? My concept of that list on the front page is that they are supposed to be new, unwatched videos from my subscription list. Instead, they seem to show a random selection of new videos from my subscription list, watched or unwatched, and only one from each subscription. So if, say, New Scientist puts out 3 videos in between visits, I only see the latest one. Why isn't it more like an RSS feed? Or maybe I should use an RSS feed for it?


• Weight loss is still on track to reach my goal by Christmas. I'm such a dork I even wrote a program to calculate some stats, including what day my current trend will have me finishing at. 12/24/2008 so far.


• One of the projects I'm not ready to post about yet involves some electronics running outside. I wasn't comfortable having it plugged in, so I went with a large, rechargeable battery. After getting everything working, I realized
  1. The motors weren't powerful enough
  2. but they were still drawing too much power to allow the battery to last very long
  3. and I bet the battery won't work well in the cold
  Sooo....yeah. Back to the drawing board for at least part of that.