The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.
An old-school post Boing Boing post from Cory:
The genuinely disruptive, novel artefacts are by definition unpredictable. This fact is at the core of the doctrine of Fair Use: We don't know what innovations the world may come up with in the future, but we know that the fewer restrictions we put on tomorrow's innovators, the higher the likelihood that they will come up with something marvellous that will be to all our benefit.So, let's cut 'em some slack. The next time you meet some person who is utterly captivated by some undertaking that completely mystifies you, give him the benefit of the doubt. Hold back on your instinctive imputing of excess spare time and hang the obsession in a tickler-file in the back of your brain to pull out and think about in the shower or the post-office line. If you're very lucky, a little of that delight may rub off on you, too.
Interesting thoughts from Andy Hunt about the nature of Ruby and Rails.
Ruby and Rails are smaller. Less complex. More effective. More agile. It's an odd contradiction in this post-modern world, but less really is more. Stay tuned.
I've had the remaining part of a gift certificate to Vroman's since Christmas so last week, I picked up one of Ken Bruen's books. I've been hearing lots about him as one of the new faces in crime fiction. I've read some of his short stories and now that I've read The Killing of the Tinkers, I can see why he is getting such positive reviews.
A quick and vicious read is how I thought about the book. Definitely what you want in a crime story.
I bought it on Wednesday at lunch and finished it Thursday night. Perfect.
Sean McGrath gives a definition:
An unpleasant emotional state that comes with not having access to your RSS aggregator for a period of time through no fault of your own. e.g. because your server based RSS aggregator is down.
John Scalzi reacts to some reactions towards his post in regards to the possible piracy of his books.
You know, these are all really fascinating questions, and I'm sure at the next WorldCon or other science fiction convention I'm at I'll be on a panel discussing these things with other folks, and we'll all be very interesting and thought-provoking on the matter, and who knows, maybe something we say won't be completely full of crap. However -- and I want to be very clear on this, so allow me to use some profanity to bring the point home -- in a very real and fundamental sense, I don't fucking care. Right now, it's 2005, I've got one science fiction book published and two more coming in the next twelve months, and my primary concern is selling those books in the here and now. Today I am looking for ways to get my writing in front of people, perchance to convince these fine people to purchase that writing.
He then goes on to break down how his book, Old Man's War is doing. Fascinating information.
ESPN puts together a conversion chart for Malcolm Glazer, new owner of Manchester United.
Bruce Tate puts together five of his favorite things about Spring.
I've been thinking about possibly including some Spring functionality in a project I'm working on. I think it could really utilize the IoC concept quite well.
Ok, why didn't anyone tell me about Kayo Books? I was in San Francisco once a month when I worked for CollabNet and I would have lived here.
... providing vintage paperbacks, pulp and popular culture to San Francisco. Our small store is like a museum of pulp fiction and non-fiction. The stock presents a glimpse into the lurid past of dimestore novels, sleazy 1960s exploitation, and 1970s pop culture.
The Litblog Co-Op has released their first selection, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.
I remember reading some good things about the book back at the first of the year. I guess another book needs to be added to the queue.
From the looks of it, Powells is giving a 30% discount on the book.
So from the looks of my archives, I last posted about my 52 books in a year goal the 2nd of February. I had stopped at #5. Needless to say, I have read a few books since then.
As a side note, I've decided to include literary journals in the list. I feel that most have enough content to deserve 1/2 a book. So, 2 literary journals equals 1 book. If that's a problem for anyone, well, tough.
Also, I'm not including technical books even though March was a big month for my reading of them. Since I rarely read one from cover-to-cover, I'm just going to not count them.
The order might be wrong but here's a list of what I've read:
#6 - The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004
#7 - Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
#8 - Getting Things Done by David Allen
#9 - The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
#10 - The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
#11 - Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
#12 - A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
#13 - Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See
#14 - How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers
#15 - The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
#16 - After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
So I think that catches me up. Obviously I wish I could write a little snippet about each book but I can honestly say that I would recommend each one. Another upcoming post will have my current book queue.
Mark Watson writes an informative article about using Ruby for network programming.
Brad Fitzpatrick recently gave an overview of the way LiveJournal uses MySQL, some very interesting ideas and pictures.
Last night, I headed to Skylight Books and went to a reading of David Francis' new book, The Great Inland Sea. Mark Sarvas had a little interview with the author which alerted me of the event.
The novel actually isn't new since it was originally published in the UK before finally making its way over here. I picked up the book after the reading and I have added it to my book queue.
This was the first time I had been to Skylight and I cannot wait to go again.
I was hoping to meet Mark Sarvas and I might have seen him but since I wasn't sure so maybe at the next literary event.
... an annual literary journal devoted to contemporary fairy tales. The journal hopes to provide an elegant and innovative venue for both established and emerging authors of poetry and prose. Fairy Tale Review is not devoted to any particular school of writing, but rather to fairy tales as an inspiring art form.
Tod Goldberg gives some insight into the life of the guy ordering books.
Your life as a writer on tour basically boils down to a trusting a kid who couldn't get a job at Hot Topic to do the right thing.
Sarah Weinman points to a new collection of short stories she will be a part of. Unfortuantely you have to wait until March of 2006.
Super Goat Man by Jonathan Lethem
The Concrete Jungle by Charlie Stross
And the Deep Blue Sea by Elizabeth Bear
Sorrow Green Upon the Water and Snow Fell in Florida by Kyle Minor
About half of the latest Swink
I think I could talk about every post from the Creating Passionate Users blog but I like this one about making the user happy.
Intermittent, unexpected treats are more powerful than regularly scheduled expected treats.
I can feel my productivity already being pulled away.
Python Challenge is a game in which each level can be solved by a bit of (python) programming.All levels can be solved by straightforward and very short scripts.
Let me first say that whenever Bill posts, I read it. Even though I don't think we've ever talked, I value his opinion on things very highly. Thus, when he talks about Maven2, my ears perk up.
It looks like they are continually doing good things in the updated version. I guess I'll need to just buckle down and do a comparison on how much work it would be to move to Maven2 as well as Ivy.
Sam shows how to keep the order of objects when they are grabbed from the database via ActiveRecord.
Backpack was launched yesterday. It's the latest web application from the folks at 37 Signals. I've signed up but haven't really started using it yet. They bill it as a personal information manager but it also is somewhat wiki-ish.
There's been some very positive initial reaction but Russ wished they would have focuses on mobile phones instead of the Web and PJ Hyett just doesn't find it useful.
I'll save my decision until I have used it a bit.
Patrick Logan has written a Python JSON reader/writer. Very nifty if you are looking for something other than XML for configuration.
More stuff from bbum as well as some initial thoughts from Dethe.
For the record, this post is coming from my new Tiger install. I had some problems with trying to do an upgrade but all seems to be going well after backing up everything and doing a fresh install. I'll have a specific post about my experience later in the day.
Ted Leung looks at some cool ideas for utilizing some of the new metadata features in Tiger.
Patrick Logan points to an upcoming symposium on dynamic languages. It's going to be held during OOPSLA down in San Diego this fall. I'm hoping to attend OOPSLA this year so this could be very interesting to go to.
Once I actually get Tiger installed (an upcoming post once it happens), this post will be quite helpful. It brings together all the little things that need to be done to get Ruby and Rails working on Tiger.
Bill Bumgarner shows how to use Python with the new Core Data architecture in Tiger.