Seth Milliken — Words, Thoughts, Tech

I've spent the evening slogging through html, photos, and code, somehow winding up with this blog as my new home page. Woo woo.

I've just installed Moveable Type 2.21. My first step into the world of blogging. First thing I need to do is come up with a better word than "blog".

Bruce Eckel's MindView, Inc: Does Java need Checked Exceptions? Don't stub your exceptions! Eckel and Kabutz's ExceptionAdapter seems to do the sort of thing I always thought one was supposed to do with exceptions, but I never got around to doing it myself. I suppose I'll have to look at it more closely.

AmIAScreenSaverOrNot is a screensaver that uses images from Hot Or Not.

edit stylesheets


find desktop app for editing entries (kung-log?)


figure out how to add dynamic content to link column


is it possible to view by category?


are there any plugins for managing lists?


private vs. public delineation possible?

I've just put up the third in a series of daily photos I've been taking of myself for the last month or so. You can find them here: dailyme3

Before a marathon session of Soul Calibur ass-kicking, Tadhg introduced me to the "screen" utility. Now in the saftey of my own home, I've only been playing with it for only ten minutes and already I see great potential for usefulness. As the man page mentions, "A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of all the features." Right.

At long last, I have a working issue tracking system. I finally solved the tomcat classpath issues that were confounding me, and successfully installed scarab. This makes me very happy. Now on to adding my projects ("modules" in scarab parlance) to the system....

Woo hoo. WebObjects 5.1.4 is out even before the "official" release of Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Now that I've resolved the scarab smtp problems I was having (by upgrading to a development release), I am very close to having a comfortable development environment again. And now I can upgrade the G4/733 to Jaguar.

dailyme4 is up. There are some real winners in here. Not enough sleep. Just woke up. Sunburned. Unshaven. There's roughly one portrait shot for each close-up. Someday I might actually indicate which day each shot was taken on.

I've put up dailyme5. This brings the the total to around 160 pictures of myself I've put up. Why?

Here is the first round of scrabble photos. Primarily final boards. Sometime in the distant future, I may add links to notations for the games, including such trivial information as participating players and dates the games were played.

I've finally put up photos from the camping excursion Linda and I went on to King's Canyon in June. More bears, flora, vistas.

For the sake of completeness, here are dailyme and dailyme2, which I originally posted pre-blog.

With Wasabi (2001) Jean Reno has paid off his debt to society for having participated in Godzilla (1998). (For the record, Matthew Broderick is still on probation.)

I've finally put up the few photos I took at my class reunion earlier this month.

Interviewing for FileMaker positions recently, I wanted to be able to provide a demonstration of my skills without breaching my confidentiality agreements with previous clients. So I built this Scrabblet over a weekend using FileMaker 6.0v3 on Mac OS X 10.2. Although a bit on the slow side, it does a decent job of tracking and scoring plays in a game of Scrabble.

Here are some known issues with this first version:

- The UI is not phenomenal, and there are likely a number of usability issues as a result of my being the sole tester.

- Minor redraw glitches.

- Can't play a single tile as the first play.

- Allows a play of more than seven new tiles in a turn.

- Scoring is not implemented for the remaining tiles on the final racks.

- While in game replay mode, records for successfully challenged words will erroneously be deleted.

- While in game replay mode, definitions of blank tiles are not remembered.

- Mode for freeform board setup is not complete.

- During a play, blank tiles collide with tiles whose letter is the same as the letter to which the blank has been defined; those tiles must be entered as blanks (e.g. "?") for a valid play.

- Responsibility of some lower-level functionality is not well-defined.

- Calling conventions, preconditions, and postconditions are not always clear.

- I made a couple of ugly script hacks in the name of expediency over redesign.

- A number of fields and scripts could be pruned to improve cleanliness and prevent confusion.

- Lacks thorough commentary in many areas.

- Didn't fully exploit the stack-based computer emulator. Not well documented.

- Requires the not-inexpensive full version of FileMaker Pro 6.x.

- And yes, it can be a bit slow at times, especially when a play creates many new words. :-)

dailyme6, dailyme7, and dailyme8 now posted. Looking at some of the pics from these sets, I'm starting to think this project is a preemptive strike at blackmailers.

Ever seen a shattered lcd?

I finally upgraded to moveable type 2.63. Added a category list to the header.

ssh tunneling is a great lightweight vpn stand-in. You do need three things: an account on a externally accessible machine that is on the same internal network as the machine you're tunneling to, the IP address of the machine you're tunneling, and knowledge of what port(s) you need to forward. The syntax is: ssh <your account>@<externally accessible machine> -L <local port>:<internal target host>:<port to forward>

NetNewsWire now supports Moveable Type. This is a test of that functionality. If it works well, maybe I'll post more. On a completely unrelated note, I've been experimenting with leaving Sticky Keys turned on to see if I can improve the state of my wrists which have both taken a turn for the worse due to various combinations of foosball, swing dancing, playing guitar, and typing.

Today I did laundry, made a list of bugs I found in an application I downloaded today, wrote an email to someone I've never met, read part of a book, played guitar, changed two light bulbs (one with the other), netsurfed, played a video game for far too long, finally disposed of a dozen or so pairs of rather ratty underwear (i.e. overworn underwear), listened to a lot of music, moved my car to avoid yet another parking ticket, and paid some bills. But not necessarily in that order.

Today I didn't find the matching sock for four socks, didn't write email to any of the n people I've been meaning to write to for ages (where n is greater than fifty), my faith in the the average human being to do the right thing didn't increase, I didn't write a single line of code, I didn't work on any of my projects, I didn't post another page of dailymes, I didn't memorize anything, I didn't talk to anyone, ad nauseated. And didn't sleep. But not necessarily in that order.

I think the [Joseph] Heller influence is still strong with me.

In the context of all that has happened in my life since I started this blog, these lists highlight the utterly random nature of what I actually do blog. Of course, if you're not me, or don't know what's been going on with me, you may not fully appreciate the significance of this. Or, for that matter, care.

Proust is moving up my reading list.

I want a search engine that can catalog and search the text of every book and magazine article that I've ever read, complete with my comments in the margins. And while we're at it, it should return the results in my handwriting. In pencil.

Kris Kopicki created a jEdit application bundle that addresses a number of problems with 4.2pre versions of jEdit on Mac OS X. But it is not very easy to find at all, so I'm posting a link here.

"I've noticed a few problems people have been having with

background mode, missing icon and the cocoa libs not being

found. The 4.2 bundle will fixes all that."

You can get it here:

A shout out to my peeps, especially my homey Sandy-G! Here is a link to some of the funniest stuff I've seen since the All Your Base Are Belong To Us craze: gi joe spoofs. Thanks to Darren for pointing it out.

My monkey melted today as I slept. I pulled an all-nighter and fell asleep in the early afternoon. When I woke up, I found patches of what felt like cakes of sea salt on my sheets. Then in the shower, I discovered and brushed off many small bumps on my upper back and neck. It wasn't until I had put my contacts in, stepped back out into the bedroom, and saw my bookshelf that I realized what had happened. My wax monkey had melted. And as its waxy corpus dripped from the top shelf, the drops hit the lower shelves and the arm rest of my futon and splattered all over my bed, my books, the carpet, and my sleeping self.

Continuing to abide by my promise to Evil Incorporated, I am placing the Monkey in another prominent place here on my site, where I hope it will be less susceptible to another meltdown.

How much change do you need to have before it makes sense to buy a change counting machine? How do you know if you have enough change to buy one?

I'm glad to hear that you've gotten out of London. I hope all is well in Stockholm. Förlåt, raring.

I stand alone in an elevator, descending. All at once the elevator lurches and starts dropping precipitously. A terrible roar erupts as concrete rips violently against steel; the metal and wood-panelled sides of the elevator ripple, rend, and then scrape off leaving me in a concrete box, still descending, now amidst rushing whispers of silence. Then the walls begin to move in. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Surrounded in concrete, still falling, walls steadily closing in—abruptly I recognize my imminent death. Fear evaporates. Instead, an exasperated frustration recedes into irritation and then gives way to indescribable disappointment. Moments before the encroaching concrete crushes me, I open my eyes. I lay in bed, heart pounding, sweating profusely. In that instant I know I had been dreaming. In the next instant, I close my eyes again—a blink in reverse—reenter the dream. And die.

I sleep soundly for the rest of the night.

Walking home from work tonight, I thought about samsara, the Buddhist notion of suffering brought about by craving. Wishing that things are not as they are is a rejection as much of what is good about now as it is what is not. But all is as it is; no need for dichotomy. Still struggling with that. Rejection of now is self-perpetuating and habit-forming. Accepting now does not preclude growth or change. Why do I reject now?

Words I repeated to myself frequently as I walked up the hill were "lust", "doubt", "guilt", "uncertainty", and "fear", each of these words bringing to mind images and impressions of people and events from my recent past. I have often felt reassured by the simplicity and apparent truth of the notion that one ought not desire to affect what is not within one's power. But this time, as I thought about it, I could not escape the gray area I'd done so well at avoiding: how does one know what is within one's power? Is it merely a matter of faith that I could, despite a lifetime of experiences making me less and less likely to do a certain thing, spontaneously choose to do that thing? Or are my proclivities so strong that I would never do that thing though I might without effort convince myself that I could, thereby conveniently avoiding the test?

Sandy is sitting here next to me as I write about the awful pictures he took while he was visiting me here in San Francisco. Fortunately, the conversation was better than the photos by orders of magnitude. And he left me a book about cadavers! What more could a guy want?

From Sandy: Seth should be happy with the photos. They make him look better than in real life..... I am also one of the few people willing to visit him, that should count for something. Sorry my photgraphic artistry is not up to snuff....

My last Pilot Pentopia T2300-P has finally run out of ink. Time to get some BRFT4 refills. This is by far the best pen I have ever used. The weight, the balance, the flow and consistency of the ink all seem to be made for the eccentricities of my style of writing. That this fine instrument happens to include a mechanical pencil and stylus is icing on the cake.

divx

So it's been almost six months since I've updated this thing. I've written only about five entries in my journal in that time, and hardly any personal email. Until a few days ago, the most extensive writing I had done for months had been for work.

I have been doing well. Fairly uninspired at the moment, but well. Undoubtedly, for me to try to recount all of the drama and excitement of this year so far would be counterproductive. I'd probably never finish this entry, much less post it.

Random highlights include such things as: starring as Lord Mormon on Fantasy Bedtime Hour (Episodes 16 and 17; kung-fu voiceover in Episode 14), playing lots of MTG, spending lots of time at Cup-a-Joe, and not playing enough guitar.

I've been spending most of my time with a small number of close friends. I don't feel like I've been at home a whole lot lately. By the time I do get home each day, I rarely have the combination of energy, time, and timing to keep in touch with anyone.

Sandy has shamed me into starting to update this blog again. I set him up with his own blog not too long ago, and he's been posting to it regularly. He surely has much less free time than I do, but still manages to post at least once a week. Surely I can do as much.

David also gave me a man-mule sized kick in the...er...ass.

If you, dear reader, would like a blog of your very own to neglect grievously, drop me a line.

Is this thing on? Hello? Testing 1, 2, 3. Wow, it sure is dusty here.

I went to the dentist this week for the first time in almost a decade. It wasn't as bad as I had expected, but I still have a mouthful of trouble. What finally got me in was a compacted molar, which came out on Thursday. Ouch.

If you need a dentist in downtown San Francisco, I can recommend Dr. Larson without reservation.

During a dream last night I devised a technique to cut and paste between dreams and reality. I cleverly pasted the description of this technique on the shared dream/reality clipboard. I was thwarted by the fact that alarm clock snooze bars clear the clipboard.

I like to think I'm a reasonable, fair-minded adult capable of appreciating a good argument even if I do not agree with the opinion that that argument is used to support. I acknowledge that I have my biases and limitations, but I like to think I am capable of understanding another point of view even when I do not share that point of view. But I am having a great deal of difficulty understanding how a well-informed person with reasonable intelligence in an average station in life could support the Bush administration. I would sincerely like to have someone provide me with (or provide reference to) a clear, well-reasoned explanation for why they feel that the Bush administration adequately represents the majority of citizens in this country.

If an essential part of your argument relies on the validity of your particular interpretation of the Bible, I suspect we're going to run into difficulties that I currently lack the capacity to reconcile.

The microwave at work tells me "ENJOY YOUR MEAL" when it's done popping my popcorn.

popcorn fills a bowl

mongolian fire ablaze

i eat a full meal