Andrew Huey | pointlessly blogging since 2001
As of last night, I’m officially down fifty pounds since I started my diet. The attached image is from the app LoseIt, which I’ve been using to track my weight loss. For me, counting calories with an app was really the key to making any sustained progress.
I need to figure out now if I want to set a new goal, and stay on the diet, or maybe take a break, and just eat at a “maintenance” level for awhile.
One more comics-related post for today, this time on Sebastian O, another Grant Morrison mini-series. I’ve posted a short review on Goodreads. This one goes back to 1993, so it was probably one of his earliest works for Vertigo.
It’s also got me wondering about Morrison and Yeowell’s earlier collaboration, Zenith, which is apparently going to be reprinted later this year.
One more comic book post for today. (Probably the last, but maybe not.) I just finished reading Vimanarama, by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond. This is one of two Morrison mini-series that I picked up at a con a few years back. I posted a short review on Goodreads. There’s one more thing I wanted to post though: I just found Philip Bond’s Flickr page. Wow. Lots of cool stuff!
I’m trying to heal up after getting a bit too much sun last weekend, so, even though it’s very nice out, I’m spending the weekend indoors. So I’m catching up on some comic book reading! I’ve also been experimenting with posting reviews over on Goodreads. It’s fairly easy to re-post the reviews here, but rather than do that, I’ll just link to them. I posted short reviews of Criminal, Superman: Kryptonite and Flash: The Wild Wests this weekend. I’m gradually working my way through the last of my slush pile of regular-format comics. I stopped buying them in 2008, so they’re all over five years old now. Eventually, I will reach the bottom of this pile. 🙂
I posted about Project Euler being down a few days ago. It’s back up, but only as a static site. So you can read the problems, but there’s no access to the functionality for checking solutions, or getting into the solution forums, or anything like that. There’s a thread on reddit about this, apparently created by one of the Euler admins. It does sound like they are going to get full functionality back up and running at some point, though they don’t seem at all sure about when that will be.
I’m actually not working on any Euler problems right now, but I had intended on getting back into it at some point. Project Euler is such a great resource, I really hope they can get it back up and running soon!
We’re still on IE 8 at work. (Yes, I know.) Just for fun, I checked to see what this blog would look like in IE 8. Holy cow. Not even close, huh? I use Firefox for all of my web browsing at work, except for when I need to do stuff on our intranet, so I didn’t realize how far gone modern web pages look in IE 8.
Things you notice, while spelunking through ten-year-old blog posts:
I’ve had my Gmail account for almost exactly ten years. I’m mostly OK with Gmail, but I’ve been thinking about moving off it recently, due mostly to the standard privacy concerns that everyone seems to have now, plus maybe just because I like changing things around every ten years.
I set up an account on Proton Mail a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t done much with it. I like the general idea, but I don’t think I could use their web interface for all of my day-to-day email. I’ve also considered FastMail, and I think that’s the most likely candidate if I do decide to switch. They have a good reputation, from what I’ve been able to tell, and they’ve got a really nice interface, and reasonable pricing. I’ve also considered getting a hosted Exchange account with these guys, or maybe trying out MyKolab. Probably the next time we get a rainy weekend, and I have nothing else to do, I’ll get serious about this.
I recently started reading WordPress 3 Plugin Development Essentials. While I haven’t gotten far enough into it to post a review, there is one great quote in the first chapter I wanted to share:
Opening up an existing WordPress plugin is a bit like going into a public restroom: it may be perfectly clean and hygienic, or it may be a rank and apoplectic mess of functions, logic, and HTML. Just be prepared.
I think I’m going to like this book. 🙂
I was surprised and disappointed to see that Project Euler was offline, as of yesterday. The message they’ve posted on the home page makes it sound fairly serious, and it doesn’t sound like they’re 100% sure they’re going to be able to bring it back up any time soon.
I can’t understand why anyone would hack into something like Project Euler. It’s free, so there’s no money involved, and no credit card numbers to steal. It’s not political, so there’s absolutely no ideological reason to want to bring them down. And it’s not popular enough to the point where a hacker would do it just for the media attention.
I guess there might be some value in their password database, but I think most of their users would be internet-savvy enough that they wouldn’t likely be using the same password across multiple accounts. And if that’s what they were after, there must be better targets for that than Euler.
Their forum site is still up, and there’s some discussion about the problem here, but no information from the admins as of yet. And there’s a thread on reddit talking about it, which includes links to some other interesting programming puzzle sites.
In moving my blog to WordPress, I’ve accidentally created a little side-job (or mild obsession?) for myself: cleaning up old blog entries. I have over 1500 entries in this blog, so I can keep myself (pointlessly) busy for quite some time, just combing through old entries and cleaning them up a bit.
First, I have a lot of old entries that don’t have any categories assigned. This bothers me for some reason. So I’m going through those, a few at a time, and categorizing them. And the really old entries don’t have titles, because Blogger didn’t initially support post titles. So I’m adding titles to some of those. And I’m cleaning up random embeds, YouTube links, and the like.
Once thing I’m noticing is how many of the links on older posts are dead now. In particular, music-related links seem to be the most ephemeral. Links to old band websites are often dead, the bands in question apparently disbanded, the members having moved on to other bands, or living quiet lives with nine-to-five jobs, or whatever people do when their bands dissolve.
Many old domains are now in the hands of some fairly iffy companies that hoard domain names, and just put up ads on them, and/or offer to sell them for exorbitant prices. My brother Patrick’s old domain, for instance, can be bought for just $1995. Geez.
There are some really odd changes too. An old domain that used to be associated with The Pixies is now being used for a blog related to DIY home repair. I’m not sure if it’s a real blog, or a test site, or part of a scam, or what. Weird though.
I’ve found myself using the Wayback Machine site to look up some older stuff. Not everything can be found with that, but a lot of stuff can.
I’m also finding myself a little dismayed about how my brother Pat’s footprint is disappearing from the internet. I just went ahead and saved to PDF a couple of pages honoring him, just in case they disappear. I’ll probably upload them here, at some point. No point in getting too deeply into this right now, but it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. I know that dwelling too much on the past isn’t healthy, and I’m trying not to do that, but I can’t stop myself from engaging in a certain amount of nostalgia.