DuckDuckGo is a search engine. Like Google Search, you just throw some keywords into a box and get a list of results. Lots of people use Google, but I don’t. DuckDuckGo works better for me, and this is why.
Did you know that Google will give you different search results, based on who you are and what you have searched for in the past? This is called a filter bubble, and it’s annoying and dangerous. DuckDuckGo doesn’t put you in a filter bubble.
...Life is messy. We devote a lot of time and effort into managing that chaos. I thought of a little “theory”, if you will, that helps me.
Everything needs a home. The class of things that need homes is broad. It includes:
The home needs to suit the thing that goes there. I have found that getting this right is really tricky. But once you have a home for a thing, you never loose it. You will want to put things back into their homes when you are done using it, because it will feel right. If the home doesn’t fit the item, you run into a bit of friction—that slows you down and makes you more likely to put the thing where it’s easy.
...I finished the semester! This is how I feel:
Don’t you?
Well, I still have finals. But those are easy compared to the projects I’ve had to push out. I’ll probably write about my escapades later. :)
I spend a fair portion of every day writing programs. As with all professions, using the right tools makes a huge difference in my productivity and general happiness. Having good tools helps me keep my gumption up.
One of my favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Contrary to what the title suggests, this book is actually not about motorcycles. It’s about a lot of things; one topic is about tools and caring about your trade.
...Today in my proofs class (MATH 290 at BYU) we talked about the concept induction. I like this, because it sounds a lot like recursion.
On the Wikipedia article, there’s an excerpt from a book that illustrates the principle with an analogy using a ladder:
Mathematical induction proves that we can climb as high as we like on a ladder, by proving that we can climb onto the bottom rung (the basis) and that from each rung we can climb up to the next one (the step). — Concrete Mathematics, page 3 margins
...
So many notifications come to us in the form of an audible alert, and this can sometimes be inconvenient. Who likes having their phone go off in church? The problem is that sound propagates regardless of the intended target. Touch, on the other hand, is an inherently personal sensation. Setting your phone to vibrate lets you know you’re being alerted, without notifying everyone else in the room as well.
...Deutsche Übersetzung folgt.
I’ve left* Facebook.
There’s an asterisk there. I’m not going to delete my account, but I’m no longer checking Facebook more than once or twice a month, if that. I’m not trying to be a recluse—below are a few ways to contact me that I do check far more often than Facebook. I want to be your friend, but I’d rather that friendship be through a real connection rather than some online “status”.
...I once asked my dad over email how to improve my the potency of my words and thoughts. His reply came back as one word:
Revision.
Good writing does not emerge spontaneously; it comes as one practices writing. A “draft” is a pass of writing a particular work. It’s like sketching in art: when an artist starts a painting, they usually start with a rough sketch outlining where the figures will be, what the landscape will be like, etc. These sketches are composed of many lines: each coming closer to their final position.
...My girlfriend works for BYU SA—it’s the division of BYU that’s responsible for planning and running events. As part of her job, she has to review song lyrics and make sure that the song is okay to play at BYU functions.
This can get rather irksome. Imagine reading text looking for vulgar words or phrases. Yuck. I took some time this evening to write a little website that checks MetroLyrics for any vulgar words or phrases. I have an extensible blacklist which gets initialized at server start by some phrases from FrontGate.
...Quick note for those who don’t know about Docker: Docker is a program that lets me take packaged-up programs (called images or containers) and run them without having to worry much about dependencies.
Today I decided to upgrade my version of Ghost Blog. I’m using the Docker image on a Digital Ocean droplet. Updating should be simple, I thought. I would take down the blog then spin it back up again after pulling down the latest Docker image. I ran docker stop ghost-blog, removed the container with docker rm ghost-blog then ran docker pull ghost:latest. The container came down without a problem.