I feel like I've been so busy lately it's difficult to track the days. The past two weeks, when it was friday I wondered how the week had passed by so quickly. But still, I guess some stuff must have happened since my last diary entry from the 10th. So, let's go through it little by little, as I remember it.
There was election in Denmark, and a new government got elected. I don't know how that will affect the daily life, but I guess it will probably be 95% same-ol-same-ol, which is fine.
I haven't had much time to read lately, but this saturday I bought two books; a Kurt Cobain biography, and a book modestly entitled "Civilizations". I've read the Cobain biography, which was kinda interesting. I've always been a fan of Nirvanas music, and it's impossible to avoid becoming fascinated by Cobains short, tragic and eventful life story. I didn't know a lot about Cobain before reading the book, but now at least I have some understanding of what his music was about, and what made life so hard for him. I still think of Nirvanas unplugged show in mtv, as mtv's finest hour. Reading about the circumstances of the show, didn't make it less interesting. The book made me think of a lot of things, among the more superficial, how eventless the music scene has become, and how 90% of all popular bands are totally worthless and uninteresting. sigh.
I'm going to read the "Civilizations" book soon (kind of a gamble book-wise), but first I'm reading a book called "Flashman and the Dragon", a book recommended to me by a friend.
I have been working a lot on packaging at work lately, trying to make the search engine more of a packaged product. It's one thing to write a piece of software that performs a given task, but it's quite another to create logical product boundaries, and decide what features arguably belong in the product, and which ones don't. Then there is pricing policies, license policies, extra features policies, support policies, maintainance policies, customer support, product tailoring and more. Thankfully I only have a small part of that responsibility, but it makes you think about how a better focus on the big picture of product development would have avoided many problems. On the other hand, theres the problem of evaluating which problems could have been avoided by better planning, and which problems would have surfaced no matter what. After all, it's impossible to plan every stumbling block in advance.
I've decided to be more active in my studies next semester. The last year, I've used too much time working, and too little time studying. In fact, I haven't had a single course this entire year, but now I've reached a point where I'm beginning to actually feel inspired for some more studies. There was a reason for not studying the last year, I've not really been in the mood for written projects or courses or exams or stuff like that. I hope that has changed now.
Advogato as a community is a funny animal. Unlike most other communities which are by nature focused on discussions and direct interchange between participants, Advogato is most of all (in my mind) a forum where people publish their immediate thoughts and diary entries, with no particular audience in mind. Of course the other readers of advogato is the audience, but the connection is very indirect. The diary entries are like a continuous stream of consciousness which is fed into the community as a testimony of the daily lives of other in the community. Most readers of a given diary entry does not know the person writing the entry, but still people recognize user names from previous entries, and gradually get an impression of that person. Of course it's impossible to follow all "threads" of diary entries, so instead you naturally "pick up" a couple of people (who you don't know) and follow their diaries. I don't why, and I don't know if it's only me (which I doubt). I guess its both natural curiosity, and at the same time the desire to assert that ones everyday feelings are shared by others in this "community". At times I fear that advogato attracts narcissists. At times I fear that I am a narcissist, in a culture of self-love gone wrong. Or maybe I've rust read too much Cobain biography in the weekend :)