Let's Try Something New

I realize I've gotten very slack about posting anything new here. It's not that I don't have anything to write about. I have plenty of thoughts to share but few of them would merit a full blog post. So I'm going to take a shot at "micro blogging" and give Twitter a try.

Ever since I stopped doing software development for a living I've gotten a little "curmudgeonly" about some of the newer tech on the web and I want to reverse that trend. I don't normally gravitate towards anything resembling "social networking" but Twitter looks like it can give me an outlet for those very short ideas that I want to post. And with the addition of the gadget to show my Twitter updates here I can keep at least some of the content here fresh in between those full-sized posts that come to me less frequently.

Best Fan-made Trailer Ever

Okay, I'm sold on Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan. Now let's get Warner Brothers on board with this and get the rest of this movie made. This is honestly the best fan-made trailer I've ever seen...

Gardening Is Relaxing?

I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday coinciding with a day off from work and did some gardening/landscaping here. A day of labor and one aching back later and what was once a weed bed under the peach tree in the front yard is now a nice bed of hostas.

The hostas were from my mom's house. I moved and divided a row of them for her last year and she gave me some of what was cut back to use at my house. I planted them last summer and they filled in nicely but I never had the chance to make a proper garden for them. I planted them in the remains of several failed attempts to grow anything meaningful under the peach tree out in front.

The soil there was good but nothing had been done to control the weeds. The plastic border that had been put in long before I arrived here was buried under a ring of large stones and those were sinking into the ground and being overtaken by the so-called lawn as well. I was determined not to let the weeds run rampant again this year or struggle trying to trim the grass growing between the rocks.

So I took out all of the stones, most of which were at least as big as my head and pulled up all of the old plastic edging. I then proceeded to put weed blocking fabric down, cutting and stapling it in place to allow openings for the plants whose leafy spikes are an inch or two above the soil now. Then I unrolled a length of new plastic edging and worked it into the trench I had dug with a hand trowel. I had to resort to cutting an additional piece from a second roll of the stuff. Apparently whoever installed the first one had more than a 20' length to work with.

A few more staples in the landscaping fabric to hold down the edges, almost three bags of cedar mulch later, some more work on my hands and knees and the whole thing looks a lot more like a garden. Now I just need find the time and energy to do this sort of thing in roughly a dozen other spots in the yard and I might actually have something resembling curb appeal here.

I hurt my back quite nicely doing this project. It's been a long winter and I'm out of shape, so I'm taking a day to rest and medicate the pain away. Overall, I think it turned out pretty nicely, I'll post more shots later this summer when the plants fill in again.

Almost Like Old Times

I deliberately avoid talking about my work here. That's my professional life and I don't think this is the forum in which to discuss it. But a new project at work that I'm involved in has actually engaged the higher functions in my brain and I'm drawing on "mad skillz" I acquired at my previous place of employment. I won't go too deeply into the nuts and bolts of how it all works but the next paragraph or two could contain stuff that makes people's eyes glaze over if they aren't familiar with IT-related things.

The project calls for auditing data entered into a system and generating a report based on the audit results. Naturally it's all on an MS system so Excel is the weapon of choice, and for that matter I'm limited to 2003 for the time being. So it's finally come to this, I have to figure out an actual MS-based solution for reading a data structure.

Back in the day, I would have piped the data out of Excel into a flat file to populate a MySQL database. Then I'd use a PHP-based front end to access the data. Maybe for some extra flourish I might have even built a Flash animation that played music and gyrated in all different ways based on the results of the data queries, much like the one described in a passage from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency...but that would be showing off.

So now instead of using those tools I'm teaching myself Excel and VBA as the project scope increases, and also to focus on more elegant solutions to existing functions. Even though it's MS I'm back to learning new things for a living again. It feels good to access this part of my brain, the part that likes solving programming puzzles and finding better ways of getting answers out of data structures. I'm glad I had a mentor who gave me the freedom to acquire these skills to start with and I'm grateful for a new opportunity to use them again.

BSG: Finally a Finale

It's been nearly 24 hours now since I watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica. I've been mulling over the events of the episode, sorting them out, savoring the bits I liked and trying to work out the bits that didn't feel right. More shows need to follow this model of having a beginning, middle and end planned out ahead of time as opposed to shooting for seasonal reneweal immortality.

All of the best stories have endings and overall this was a very good ending for a series that has been one of the best shows on television. Just as not ever epsiode of the series was a hit not every part of the finale worked quite as well as they might have been hoping.

Spoilers ahead and plenty of them!

I was grateful they spared us any lengthy goodbyes as Galactica left the fleet for her final mission. And Baltar's hand-wringing was non-existent, we all knew that this was going to be the one selfless act of his life that would define his reason for existence so don't even be coy and pretend he's going with the fleet.

For that matter they wasted no time getting into the big battle, one jump and in and the guns started pounding. I think the FX have been light in recent episodes because they were saving everything up for this episode and it's all the better for it. Yet still for all of the high-tech weaponry it felt almost like a pirate adventure with Galactica ramming the Cylon colony and the crew rappelling down lines to board it.

The long-running visions of trying to find Hera in the opera housse were finally linked to Deana's visions of the Final Five by Baltar and Six and their part in all of it. And all this time the both of them have been nudged, guided and mentally jostled by a pair of angels. Angels - that works for me, a lot better than some lame "chip in their heads" pseudo sci fi techno jargon hand wave could have ever done. And the same goes for Kara Thrace, I think her character is made all the more interesting and meaningful by her being an angel.

I got the feeling that the opera house visions were just as much memories as premonitions. Events like these had played themselves out so many times that they were becoming part of the genetic memory of everyone involved. I don't think "All Along the Watchtower" triggered the Final Five. I think that passing through the region of space that served as a signpost for the 13th Tribe of Kobol unlocked some of their shared memories which happened to include knowledge they were Cylons and a song they knew way back when. The same could be said for Kara's ability to play the song, her "father" taught her something important a very long time ago, the song is just a metaphor for a deeply seated memory.

How many times had God tried to set His plan in motion only to have it all go awry because of a bad pattern being repeated? Genetic memory, how much of our baggage is built-in and how much do we choose to drag along? Are we capable of overcoming the mistakes of our past and actually working towards a new way of doing things or is screwing things up just the way that we're wired? Big questions for a sci fi TV show. Regardless of genre, if more shows were as well-crafted and thought-provoking as Battlestar Galactica has been I'd be watching a lot more television.

Spring Springs, Winter Remains

It's the first day of spring but winter is always slow leaving in this part of the state. Through an odd quirk of geography even the south end of Barre sheds its snow at least a week or two before the north end of town. It's a combination of altitude and latitude, not only are we farther north but also further up in some hilly terrain. Normally by now I've at least seen a robin or two but not so this year.


I have much less time for bird-watching this year anyway, thanks to this past December's ice storm and the damage it left behind. As the snow recedes more and more of the debris becomes visible. It's going to be a very active spring and summer trying to clean up around here.

What?

A hearing test today confirmed that my hearing has in fact gotten slightly worse in the last couple of years. Tinnitus is maddening but can be treatable with amplification so I'll have to look into those options. I'm not deaf or even anywhere near hearing-impaired yet so there's no rush.

Meanwhile, here are a few links that caught my attention today - enjoy!
---
Shoe-thrower fans unite online - Yet another great use for Facebook! This actually gave me the idea that maybe we should hold our politicians accountable to the best pitching arm at a dunking tank. At a buck a throw there's no telling how quickly we could wipe out the national debt.
---
5 ways the unfilmable film Watchmen could have an unthinkable sequel - This has come up in conversation a couple of times lately and it bears repeating here. If an author refers to one of his works as, "unfilmable" writers and directors and other various and sundry in Hollywood shouldn't take it as a dare. And you know how Hollywood loves sequels so just imagine how much worse Watchmania* could get.

* - I take no responsibility in the event this word ever catches on.

---
TV Guide Magazine's Feature on Battlestar Galactica - The homestretch is finally here, it's the beginning of the end for Admiral Adama and the remains of humanity as well as several friendly cylons and there's still a frackload of unanswered questions. If you're just joining the program now (or if you still get dizzy spells trying to sort out "No Exit") I highly recommend reading Airlock Alpha's 'Battlestar Galactica' Final Five Primer. “This is not going to be the ending you’re anticipating,” said exec producer David Eick. I hope he's right, that's what I've always loved about this show.