A Nerd’s Haven

WO and I experimented this weekend with smoothies and ended up with something rather tastee:

Cranberry/Strawberry Smoothie

• 1 can Ocean Spray whole berry cranberry sauce (Anyone know of a low/no-sugar alternative? We couldn’t find frozen cranberries, and this crap has high fructose corn syrup in it.)
• 1 bag of frozen strawberries
• 3-5 tablespoons nonfat plain yogurt

Blitz in a blender (my low-speed “puree” setting works very well for frozen fruits) until smooth. Makes about 4 1-cup servings at about 270 calories each (ouch! damn HFCS). Very, very tastee, though. The yogurt makes it a little creamy.

If you’ve got frozen cranberries, I’d recommend using 100% cranberry juice as a liquid with maybe a tablespoon or two of sugar.

*nom, nom, nom*

These are my links for June 15th through June 18th:

• xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe - Everyone probably already reads xkcd, but I loved this one.
• "DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary" By Erika Moen - This whole comic series is amazing, but this particular comic (especially panel #4) had me rolling. I'd probably be arrested if I had a penis, too.
• An important issue? « I?m just saying? - This author (professor?) and a group of students set up an exhibit exploring white privilege at Seattle Pacific University. I always love discussions of white privilege for the different reactions they bring up. Some white people I've talked to have abso
• HTTP 414: Way Too F#%&ing Long - The Daily WTF - I kind of want to try this…
• Skepchick: Critical Thinking at its Finest - A hilarious series of father's day-appropriate pictures on how to take care of a baby.

One of the big worries I have is that I will look back at my life in a decade and realize that I spent my youth working only for a company. I work for a pretty awesome company now, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want all my accomplishments in life to be through them.

(more…)

These are my links for May 4th through May 27th:

• migrating email to Gmail - I just moved this domain's email to Google's hosted apps, including their gmail interface. The issue was, of course, that I had years of emails stored from IMAP that I wanted in gmail for searchability. This thread in the DreamHost forums offers two wor
• Tips for Building Your GM Notebook - Treasure Tables - I've started a GM notebook for the game I'm running for Greg. So far — just one session, and far from a completed book — it's been a big help.
• So what IS D&D anyway? : Critical Hits - One of the reasons I stopped going to the gaming store in Charlotte was the incessantly negative talk by the store owner about new versions of D & D or any system that wasn't Palladium or 3E D & D. "That's not real D & D," he'd say. This article is a re
• 13 reasons for UML?s descent into darkness | Little Tutorials - I remember my father teaching me how to do basic UML class diagrams and sequence diagrams. I still find them to be useful in planning, but not all the code-generation attempts that UML promises now. I'll write my own code, thanks.
• YouTube - Where is the center of the Universe? - …How in the world is there no center to the universe?

When I started the new job on Monday, I took a bit of time to consider how I wanted to implement Getting Things Done (GTD) in the workplace. After considering my circumstances — glued to a computer all day, no particular need to access issues from home — I decided to try out Tracks, a Ruby on Rails tool for implementing GTD. Looked hot, so after a few failed attempts to get it installed on XP at work, I set up an account on a hosted server and ran with it.

…I love it.

Now, I have a PDA, you might say. A nice little Sony Clie 610C that’s served my GTD needs well.

It has, but I’ve found myself using it less and less. Evidently, this isn’t uncommon. I have a system that works: I have a reliable way to keep up with information that’s important to me. I capture on paper that I carry in my purse, and transfer to (formerly) Palm Desktop or (now) Tracks when I’m near a computer and ready to process it.

At best, it’s nice to have a calendar at hand. But really, I’m not so famous that I often have back-to-back appointments. Or that I need anything more than a 30-to-60-minute reminder, even via SMS on my cell phone. Again, I have a system that works. Morning reviews of what I need to do, combined with setting those Most Important Tasks”, rarely let an engagement slip through the cracks.

That need for only gentle reminders means that I can move to, say, Google Calendar for my calendaring needs, little though they are. I already have a g-cal for work, and my personal one shares with that one.

But for tasks, the internet is fine. After a few days of using Tracks on a hosted solution, I figured I’d go ahead and get it installed on a subdomain here at irrsinn.net.

Um. Yeah. About that.

About 6 hours later, I have a working install using mysql.

Six hours. Of not getting things done.

Here’s a head’s up: make sure your database user’s password consists of something other than all numbers. The ruby/rails-to-mysql call to “to_s” does something funky with all-num passwords such that you will continually get an “access denied” error on running “rake db:migrate” to set up the database for your site.

Six hours. No one else on the internet is having this problem.

Of course, that’s because people pick better passwords for their DB users that I do for test users, evidently. Changing it to have letters, symbols, &tc. resolved all my issues.

I hope it helps someone else.

Regardless, I really hope Tracks is worth it. It seems like it will be.