Older blog entries for ian (starting at number 34)

A latent desire to digitize some class notes into outlines has turned into a quest fort the Holy Grail of Outlining. Seeking the holy grail of outlining. Every outliner I've encoutered thus far has Sucked Quite A Bit, but I haven't looked extensively yet...

I would be content with a simple desktop outliner, but here's my ideal tool: a Web-based outline management application. I see it storing outlines in some sort of object database or as static XML files with a dynamic outline-based directory. It should be able to output each outline as HTML (with the ability to expand and collapse hierarchies), text and raw XML. Editing can be performed three ways:

• a very simple Web-based extension of the viewer that can edit line items without need for JavaScript
• a Java viewer/editor applet with a tad more functionality (simple formatting like bold and italic?)
• a more advanced desktop application with close ties to the Web backend to provide seamless editing

Why do I need all this crap? Eh... need is a strong word. I've been accumulating this pile of illegible paper notes on each class in outline form. I figured I'd type them up on a regular basis and make them publically available on the Web in ASCII for my own benefit, so that I could drop in a computer lab and print out whatever I need, rather than hoping against hope that I'm carrying the right notebook. Well, ASCII's nice in theory and all, but rearranging a plain-text outline is a pain in the ass. A real outlining tool is a step in the right direction... however, I can either a) post the outlines in the tool's proprietary format, thus rendering them unreadable from a lab if I can't download the outliner or b) export the outline as text and hope I don't need to change anything while I'm in the lab.

If this isn't the ideal case for a Web application, I don't know what is. However, I'm no Web programmer... to build it, I'll have to learn PHP or Perl or some such. I've been meaning to for a while, but I'm not sure the time would be justified at this point. Ah well. A pipe dream, as always.

Found the Hypertext Kitchen while researching outliners. Useful-looking site.

I wonder if there's any conceivable way for Spyglass to revoke Microsoft's Mosaic license.

I've been reading the Epic of Gilgamesh for a class, but it's gotten me thinking...

• I think it's pretty telling that the Sumerian god of wisdom is also a 'wiley trickster'.
• Plausible as it may seem, it's rather pompus to believe that our culture will continue on indefinitely. If 'we' die out, I wonder what historians uncovering our ruins would think. Sumerian culture is sufficiently ancient that the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of its only surviving works (save quite a few business records), the way I understand it. So... what if some future culture found only one of our books? Ideally, what would that book be? What if said story was missing pages?

I dunno. I just find the whole notion very intriguing. What if, contrary to what historians believe, 'Gilgamesh' wasn't a well-know story--rather, the product of a few bored scribes. Imagine if our culture was judged primarily on the Unabomber's Manifesto, or something goonly like that. Would that paint the entire culture as odd or would historians have the common sense to write it off as a lone lunatic?

I'm not debating the value of technology or of conventional written tomes, but what if society somehow loses the ability to read microfilm or CD-ROMs or whatever media we chose to archive our history on at a point in the future? Granted, cuneiform is probably no walk in the park to decipher, but how would anyone even begin to understand the pits and lands in a compact disc's surface? Or even know that there's information encoded on it?

Enough rambling for me. Otherwise, I suppose I'm just in a really good mood. So much so that I'm cleaning... for the helluvit. Whacky stuff.

Out of academic curiosity, I wonder... do any of the current MP3 players have an option to auto-equalize songs based on their ID3 genre tags?

nothing coherent to say, other than damn i'm happy... which is, generally speaking, a big change. (insert sigh of contentment)

Oops. That 3PM class yesterday? Well, it was at 1:15. Second day of class and I've already fucked things up... ah well.

Generally speaking, I'm pretty darn happy at the moment... feeling better than I've felt in a while. I couldn't have asked for a better schedule (earliest class is 11 AM), the classes themselves seem interesting, I've met a bunch of people, etc. etc. etc. Went to a soccer game this evening--that was fun. I really need to work this semester, but I've decided not too until I see how classes pan out. As a result, I'm feeling a lot less stress than normal...

Only class today is at 3PM, so I'm relaxing a bit and drinking the morning coffee. Extraneous coffee, I might add--I've started getting a decent amount of sleep every night. Wonder how long that'll last.

So my philosophy prof told the class to check the new intranet for the syllabus and assignments yesterday. When I got home, the first thing I'm greeted with is a useless Flash splash page. When I log in, I arrive at the main page--all 268k of it. Ugh. It's littered with practically uncompressed JPEGs, more Flash (including a scrolling marquee) and JavaScript. I'm glad the design students who undoubtedly worked on it learned early on to alienate part of their audience (commuter students with modems). Oh, and what's the first line of text on the page?

You do not appear to have an Exchange inbox. Please contact the Help Desk if this is incorrect.

Sigh. I read in the campus paper that, despite much gnashing of teeth, the old, reliable UNIX mail server is being shut down in favor of an Exchange box. Likewise, the new intranet is entirely ASP-based, running on IIS. Yeah, I suppose I'm a bit biased, but the response times just suck... I don't know if the horribly gratutious design or IIS is at fault.

Been swamped with registration and freshman orientation these past few days... haven't kept up with diaries (reading or writing). Perhaps the lack of solid slacking time afforded by work is at fault.

Had lunch with a music therapy major and her friend. Really interesting stuff... we talked for ~two hours. Hope I didn't come across too strong--I don't think so, but I'm a pretty horrible judge of such things. Sigh. I wouldn't even know where to begin, really.

afternoon. Been without Internet connectivity (save at work) for a couple days now.

Speaking of work, yesterday was my last day. (I'm getting replaced by someone on-call getting $100/hr on-site and $60/hr phone. Sigh.) Had to document everything I do, tie up loose ends, try and purge a ton of misinformation from my boss's cranium, remove various macro viruses and reformat my workstation's drive and set it up as a cold backup for our main file server.

It's quite a relief to have it over with, but this is my only 'day of rest' before college. I have to go register this evening (any time before 11 pm, thankfully), and sign up for classes tomorrow. Haven't a clue what I'm going to take.

Went to a nice little Mexican place for lunch; went to a nice little coffee place afterwards. The combined caffeine intake prevented me from napping.

Tried to go to a movie, but the theater was closed, for some reason.

Waldo: Yeah, a friend of mine had not-nice things to say about Phorum and ended up writing forums.chathouse.com from the ground up in PHP.

later. Congrats to the Debian folks.

Evening. Now that's what I like to hear...

Noonish. I love the building where I work... red brick, six floors, skylights: it's quite beautiful. In the 30s, it was a food packing and distribution warehouse. At some point, someone had the bright idea to convert it into an office building. Even before I started working here, I had a healthy respect for it--there's a very professional-looking neon sign facing the expressway. The management came under fire for violating city advertising codes or some such, however, because the sign was too big. Heaven forbid the town have to see anything that striking on the way to work.

Sat on the steps outside the building during lunch to enjoy the weather. I do that from time to time, but today was particularly nice. I rather wish I could work outside...