Monday, January 31, 2005

Road America 2002 Photos

As promised, here are a few of the better photos I took nearly 3 years ago. They were taken on my Canon Rebel 2000 SLR, I believe on Fuji Velvia 100 film, and scanned using a friend's slide scanner.






Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Creative Block (part 1?)

I have been developing software professionally for approximately 10 years. I've done projects that have been great successes, and things that haven't really mattered. All of them solved their respective problems, regardless of what happened afterwards. If I have to pick one and only one thing that I am good at, this is it.

I used to write programs for fun. (Yeah, that's the way to attract the girls...I know...) This was definitely a factor in my successful professional career. I would create things just because I thought of the idea. Ironically, after starting to work for real money, it was no longer very interesting to do in my spare time. I still create things, but the ideas don't hold my interest very long.

Ack, this is turning into a long-winded autobiography... ANYWAYS...

What I'm trying to get around to is an exploration of creativity and motivation. I enjoy writing stories, but never get further than a few pages before worrying about whether anyone would read it, finding agents, publishing pressures, etc. I have a hard time concentrating on the enjoyment of the activity, and ignoring any obstacles way down the road. I suppose the athletic analogy might be a beginning skier abandoning the sport because he/she is worried about the pressures of being an olympic giant-slalom skier. I know my friends and others face the same sort of difficulty, which was the whole point of this blog entry.

One of the reasons I created this blog was to try to create something I would feel obligated to do, which might force me to write, when I otherwise wouldn't. So far, that portion has been successful, but I haven't yet started working on other things, stories or projects or whatever... that's the next leap.

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I realize after writing this, that most (all?) of my posts have been with a negative slant... I will have to think of something positive to write about. I'll post a couple of my better race photographs next time.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Good Radio

I listened to the new Minnesota Public Radio station, "The Current," pretty much all day at work, and again now at home... I don't know what else to say, except it's good... very good, scary good. If they can keep this up, MPR might actually get me to part with some donation money. It's very weird to feel rushed listening to 'radio', and realize it's because there are NO commercials. (I put radio in quotes because it was over the internet.)

For the few people reading this, it's 89.3 FM in the Twin Cities, and the streaming link is on their website. The aacPlus stream is amazing quality, especially considering the low-bandwidth requirement.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Fire!


Apparently it is possible for me to light a fire and not set off the smoke detector... the nice ltitle gadget that is wired into the house, and so is impossible to turn off and not disturb the neighbors... the plastic thing that creates a stunning amount of noise, but luckily doesn't automatically page the fire department.

Note to self, do not attempt to light a fire with a downdraft when the temperature is -10 degrees F.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

DVD addiction

I started a post about something philosophical, but decided against it in the end, so I thought instead I'd write about DVD's. :)
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I buy DVD's... too many of them. Probably about one-third of the trips I make to Target or Best Buy result in a DVD purchase. I doubt it qualifies as an official addiction. I don't buy movies instead of food. I don't steal them from my friends' shelves, or hoard them in their original cellophane wrappers. But let's just say that of the 150 or so DVD's that I own, I think I've watched about 100 of them, 10 of them are unaccounted for (read: I forget which friend borrowed which movie,) 10 of them are in their original wrappers because they are unwatched, and the rest are probably copies of movies that I liked in the theater, bought the DVD, but don't feel compelled enough to watch it.

Like everything, there's always someone worse to compare to... a friend of mine probably spends an average of $200 a month on Amazon. I doubt I could come up with a house payment if I hocked my entire collection.

The studios have been successful at creating the notion that a DVD might be temporary. So if you don't buy it now, there's no guarantee it will be around in the future. This is classic collector psychology. Look at Toy Story, Blues Brothers, and other movies that are currently out-of-print, and likely selling above original retail on eBay or Amazon. For instance, until it was re-released in a new box set, my copy of the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers was going for about $80 on eBay. Eventually, demand was high enough that a Brazilian bootleg was being sold for $25.

The other half of it is the technology. I never really was interested in VHS tapes. I owned a few, but renting was good enough. DVD's on the other hand are cool. I can't afford to be a real AV-geek, but I do read the box to make sure it's in 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, original aspect ratio, etc. Which leads me to what's coming: HD-DVD & BR-DVD. Collectibles that become obsolete. Uh oh.
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This will have to be a topic for another day, but I want this camera...

Monday, January 17, 2005

Summer? What's that?


dtn_stpaul
Originally uploaded by MattG42C.
I thought I better dig out an old picture to remind us here in the frozen north that it is warm here sometimes. The colors in this picture were not altered and it is pretty accurate. It was taken from my 28th floor apartment in downtown Saint Paul a couple years ago, right after a storm. It is looking west towards downtown Minneapolis, the silouhette of which you can just see in the background.

By the way, I still haven't quite figured out how the fonts work. My last entry I accidentally changed fonts and couldn't find the default one back, which I like better. So if any reader is wondering why they've changed... that's why. Also, if anyone knows why Blogger automatically changes double-spaces between sentences to singles, I'd like to know. Maybe it's an HTML thing?

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Cult of Macintosh

So this will be my first real post to this medium... I'm not sure yet if it's best to choose a particular focus for all posts, or if it's best to maintain the stream of conciousness thing. For right now, I'll go with the latter and see what happens. Lara also suggested that every second or third post should have a picture, so I will try to accomplish this as well. So with that out of the way...

Wired magazine has a section of articles on their online edition titled
"Cult of Mac". I've always thought that was appropriate, based on my experiences, which I will attempt to sum up below. With the announcement of the new Mac mini, and the iPod Shuffle, the Macintosh culture is being brought to the forefront again.

To get a feeling for what I'm talking about, head to the discussion forums at the Macintosh News Network, and read some threads. Better yet, register and post something like, "I like Macs, but the Dell I just bought is designed really well, and Windows XP works great," or, "I think that the PowerBooks should have higher screen resolutions like PC's." I predict that within 3 replies, you will be informed that you're opinion really doesn't matter. There's probably a 50% chance of being labeled a heretic. Yet, do some reading and find how when most posters refer to Windows, it is always horribly unstable, Dell is "dull," and Bill Gates is put on the same level as
Joseph McCarthy.

This sort of product zealotry is certainly not unique to Apple. Try telling a Chevrolet owner to consider buying a Ford, or ask a Formula 1 fan to sit through a NASCAR race.
The real question becomes: If Steve Jobs and Apple were in Microsoft's position would anything really be different?

There's no question that Apple designs innovative products and has lots of things going for them. They finally have an operating system in OS X that truly rivals Windows, and they might finally grasp the concept that to attract more users, you must lower costs. Now, they are faced with a question that I believe they have encountered before. Can we truly convert the legions of "unwashed" PC owners into Macintosh owners, or will our current users scare them and their wallets away?


Some footnotes:
  • There are 3 computers in my house: a 12" PowerBook, a homebuilt AMD Shuttle XPC, and an old box that is currently running Gentoo Linux and is acting as a file and print server.
  • I own a second generation iPod.
  • I have programmed on Apple operating systems going back to System 7.1.
  • For the past 8 years or so, I have coded primarily for the Win32 and WinCE platforms.
  • I want a Mac mini for no explicable reason.

First Post

Okay, my friend convinced me to do this, so here is the obligatory introduction paragraph with a bit about who I am, why I'm doing this, what may or may not be discussed, and how often it is likely to be updated. In fact, this introduction may not even be complete.

My name is Matt, I'm 27, single, live in a townhome in a suburb south of Saint Paul, Minnesota. As I write this, it's about -8 degrees Fahrenheit outside. I work as a software developer in the same sense that I imagine an architect designs buildings... once in a while they design stuff, but there's a lot of other junk that has to get done in between.

I'm not quite sure why I'm writing this yet... I enjoy writing and have started several stories, none of which have progressed beyond about 5 pages - at least in the post-college era. So I'm hoping that this will either provide an outlet for some thoughts, and hopefully help compose some ideas for other things.

Things that may be discussed on here (and are also my interests): software development, guitar, cars in general, and open-wheel racing in particular, writing, books, and I suppose life in general.

We'll see how often it gets updated...

Some links of interest:
Champ Car - http://www.champcarworldseries.com
Twin Cities Climate History - http://climate.umn.edu/doc/twin_cities/twin_cities.htm
Online Guitar Tab Archive - http://www.olga.net