Tumbling my way back...
My night has been cut short due to another headache. All in all, today was pretty good even though KU lost to K-State. Thanks to the technology known as the iPhone I can call this one from the Tumlr app on my phone. There’s not an option for posting an image or else I’d add one though or I’d continue my recent trend. For now I end my night in bed and sick.
Since I’m not sure what my internet situation will be later tonight this will be my call it in post. It was a very long week and I’m glad that it’s finally come to an end. A few weeks ago I was in the park and shot a few photos but I was short on time and short on trees with leaves.
By day I’m a developer at Mediaphormedia and for the last month or so most of my nights have consisted on working at night to keep caught up with support. My tour of duty is about a month away from ending though and I can go back to writing fun code again. Lately, I’ve felt like I don’t have enough time to work on fun applications at work and I used to use a night or two a week to balance that out with projects that I like to work on.
Tonight, I started two new projects or rather brainstormed with a friend of mine from Miami a name for a new project and a name for an older project. I have hundreds of projects that I’ve worked on but none of them have seemed useful enough to release for anyone else to work on.
Many years ago I wrote a program that back in the 90’s had just over 50k people downloaded over the course of a month. At the time, this was a huge accomplishment for me and I released the source code a few times for people to learn from. Over the course of a few years, I had over 250k people download my little application. The thought of polishing it up and selling the application for $5 or $10 did cross my mind but I made the decision to release as freeware and then put the code out in the public domain. At the time even charging $1 a copy would have more then paid for my college, paid off my car, and living expenses for quite a few years.
The application that I wrote was based on another public domain application whose source code I scoured and learned from. Even though I was not under any pressure to release the code it felt like the right decision. I learned so much from that original application that it allowed me to rewrite my application and add some new functionality to it. It was my choice to release the source code so that other people could learn from it.
Last year, I discovered that someone ported my application to Java from my old C++ code and added quite a few new features to it. I’m flattered that an application that I wrote back in 1996 or 1997 is still around and people have learned from it and are able to freely download a modern version of it which includes the rewritten source code.
Lately I’ve heard too many people arguing about which license to release their source code in and there has been a lot of talk about freedom. I’m not going to argue which side is right or wrong but instead state what freedom is to me. Freedom is releasing source code in a license that does not put restrictions on how people learn from, use, or view my code. I’d rather people learn from the source code that I wrote then fear reading it because of the license that I released it under.
This is definitely a rough work-in-progress but I wanted to get it in before midnight. I just slipped it in with a minute to spare.
After five days of being sick, I’m getting tired of being at home and sleeping. I’ve tried to take two days off from work but I’ve been needed for meetings and to work on a few fires at work despite being sick. I’ve had to work on projects from home the last few days when what I really needed was to just stay in bed and rest.
Until I feel better and have more words, here are a few more pictures that stuck out to me as I was going through my endless stacks.
My third week of photography class was tonight. I missed last week because Ben Folds was in town and played at Liberty Hall which conflicted with my class. So far class has consisted of about 85% looking at each others work, 10% looking at the masters work, and 5% lecture. The format seems to work really well because it’s easier to see your mistakes when you are putting your work in front of others.
It’s also kind of interesting watching other people grow as the class progresses and gain confidence. I’m starting to see areas that I do well and areas that I can improve in. Here is what I showed for my third week of class:
The railroad tracks near our office.
The courthouse here in Lawrence off the corner of Mass and 11th. I used my tripod to get the image to come out better but there was some unexpected reflection from the street lights at the intersection on the right side of the image.
Kate Miller-Heidke warmed up for Ben Folds and was very impressive.
Ben Folds playing at Liberty Hall where he belongs.
One of the washing wenches from this year’s KC Renfest.
Every November I have grand aspirations to take part in national blogging month and every year something stops me. Last year I started a set of tutorials on Django but I was fighting with making my blog pretty enough to release it. I made it about ten days in and I never released a single article publicly. This year I’m going to try and participate daily in a different kind of way.
For the few months my writing has fallen off and my morning schedule has been destroyed while working support. I was used to going to sleep by midnight every night and waking up by 6 am every day. During the week there are several nights that I’m up until 2 am or 3 am for work. This has made maintaining me schedule next to impossible. In December my shift will be over but I need to get back in a regular routine before then.
I woke up with a sore throat, stuffy head, and a slight headache this morning. Tack that on to going to bed close to 2 AM and this makes for a tired and worn out me. Despite my flirting with a cold, I’m feeling pretty good overall. My life is far from perfect but I don’t demand perfection. I’ve seen enough bad, felt enough good, to know that life is pretty special right now even though everything is not going as smooth as I wanted.
It seems that when I’m happy that I can see everyone else around me struggling just to keep their heads above water. I wish I could help more people through it but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. The only answers that I have today is knowing how I feel and what keeps me moving forward. It took me too many years of worrying about things that I could not stop and I could not prevent to get to the present tense and I will not relive every painful memory again. Neither should you.
webology checked in @ 614 New Hampshire St, Lawrence, KS 66044, USA
I’ve been working support for the last few weeks and I’m told that my sentence will end December 11. Until then, I’m afraid it’ll be hard to get a regular routine going. I wish it were easier but it’s out of my hands for now. There’s been a lot circling in my mind as of late but I haven’t been able to stop long enough to let it spill out.
My niece, nephew, sister, and sister-in-law drove up from Missouri to see me this weekend. It was a nice change of pace having my family come up here instead of me always having to drive back. It was fun but I’m still exhausted. I’m not used to entertaining people for a few days. They all seemed to have had fun and are back home. Perhaps I’ll get some pictures up on flickr and post some here to make this less boring… perhaps, perhaps…
webology checked in @ 409 Eisenhower Ln, Lawrence, KS 66049, USA
webology checked in @ Memorial Stadium
