Michelle and I finally got out for a good hike this summer. We’ve been busy, and I hope that my schedule and energy level allow for more of this soon. In any case, the pictures speak louder than my words so check out the flickr set for more info.
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In “The God Delusion,” Richard Dawkins does not merely present arguments against the existence of god, he also provides evidence that humans have no need of one. In addition, he spends several chapters analyzing why humans are religious at all from a Darwinian standpoint. These chapters will probably have the most lasting impact on me.
In one of my favorite passages, Dawkins supposes that religion is the by-product of another function that is useful from a Darwinian standpoint. He compares us to moths who fly into open flames, street lamps and bug zappers. A moth’s built-in navigation system is based on the only real lights available up until the recent evolutionary past; the moon and the sun. The moth’s internal system tells it to fly in a straight line while keeping the moon (or sun) at a certain angle. Since the moon and sun are at optical infinity (meaning they pretty much stay put in the moth’s field of vision), this works very well. However, when the moth uses an artificial source of light, such as an open flame or bug zapper, which are not at optical infinity, they pretty much spiral into the light source while obeying a navigation system that has otherwise served them well.
… at the end of the tunnel. Sorry, I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted but I’ve been busting my ass for about 2 months now, with time for few diversions. I haven’t even finished any books since the last time I wrote about one. (I am reading a couple of good ones right now, though, and I’ll hopefully have one finished within a week. I’m looking forward to writing about it.)
But what I really want to share is this: If you own or have any interest in owning a Nintendo DS, you need to get an R4DS card. It’s simply the best $39 you will spend on video games, ever. That is, unless you’re already a hardcore modder. It’s basically a slot-1 card that takes micro-SD cards. (I bought a 2GB one to go with mine.) Copy software onto the micro-SD, put it in your DS and turn it on. That’s about as complicated as it gets. And the software available is … overwhelming to say the least.
Anyway, I’m still here. I just paid to renew the domain name for another year, so I’ll keep it up at least that long.
I’ve known about Google Docs since way back when Writely was first acquired. Up until now I’ve never really thought it was that useful. But over the past few days I’ve been finding myself working on some word processing documents both at work and at home, so I decided to give Docs a try. So far, I’m impressed. It’s feature-rich, and pretty stable. Hell, it seems to work faster than Word ever has on my Powerbook. Browser-based applications have the unfortunate characteristic of having their most powerful feature also being their greatest weakness; Because Google Docs is online and accessed through a Web browser, I can get to my stuff from anywhere without have to copy any files from one place to another. But the downside is, I have to be connected to the Web in order to use it.Not that that’s a huge problem. Let’s face it, a modern computer not connected to the Internet is crippled. And what with the growing ubiquity of Wi-Fi, there are very few places I would want to take my Powerbook that wouldn’t have Web access.
So, for the moment, Google Docs is finding it’s way into my everyday work and personal writing. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this entry from Google Docs.
Some features I love:
- The ability to E-mail the currently open document both as the body of the email or as an attachment in a variety of formats.
- Collaborating on documents. (Although I haven’t actually gotten to use this yet.)
- Being able to check all past revisions of the document.
- The ability to export in practically any format.
Some features I’d love to see:
- Easier insertion of special characters. (You know all those Adobe character shortcuts? Those are great…)
- Ability to upload PDF documents just like I upload Word and OpenOffice documents.
- “Preview” mode that shows page margins and accurate line breaks.
- Ability to Save As an external document format, work on that document in an external application (let’s say while offline in the woods or something), and then upload the document so it “re-joins” the original document as the next revision.
- Better find and replace.
I think it’s the music that gets me.
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