stimmelopolis blog

Book a Week – 2011

estimmel — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:52:29 +0000

Well, I didn’t fulfill my goal of reading a book each week this past year, in fact I didn’t even beat my number from 2010, but I did read several books this year as a result of the bookaweek challenge. I’ve listed them below in case you are keeping track or are just here looking for something good to read.

Gasoline by Quim Monzó
HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson
On Writing by Stephen King
Cathedral by Nelson DeMille
The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
How To Think Like A Computer Scientist – Learning With Python by Allen Downey
Zer0 Day by Mark Rusinovich

In my defense I had a pretty busy year.

Back in California

estimmel — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:09:32 +0000

We’ve been back in California for almost exactly five weeks now and while there are (and will probably continue to be) some things I miss about New York, I have to admit that our quality of life has gone up significantly since our return to the west coast. The weather has been amazing and our new apartment lets in so much light through its east facing windows that you can’t help but start the day off early and with a smile on your face. As a substitute for Jenn’s favorite time of day, “glowy building time,” we are now able to enjoy “glowy room time” as the sunset beams though our west facing windows in the evening. Yes, you read that right, east and west facing windows – try that in an affordable apartment in New York! All of this sunlight makes us happy and after receiving our first electric bill today I can add that it makes our pocketbook happy as well.

It’s been a fast paced arrival though and we have filled our days, no doubt. Even though we were swamped with wedding planning mania (still going full tilt), I started work a mere five days after we arrived leaving much of the difficult home-making work to Jenn. Thankfully she tackled it like a champ and I chipped in where I could. I also decided it was time to pick up my training again and thanks to a schedule put together by Hal Higdon and handily added to my Google calendar by, you guessed it – Jenn, I have logged almost 25 miles of runs. Together we have added another 10+ miles of hikes exploring the green-spaces within a short drive of home.

There should be more posts (and pictures next time!) soon, so stay tuned!

Book a Week – 2010

estimmel — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 20:01:33 +0000

The year 2010 came to a close last night and, although I have never really made any resolutions, last year I set a goal to do something that seemed impossible to me at the time. The goal was to read one book every week for an entire year and for 14 weeks I was 100% successful. From January to April of 2010 I read one book every week. I was (and am) proud of myself for accomplishing that much. I am not sure I can claim to have read 14 books in the previous five years combined (excluding required reading for grad school and study material for my licensing exams) so 2010 was a good year in that respect.

Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle set me back a few weeks in late April / early May and eventually wound up being the one that knocked me off my stride. I don’t blame Murakami – the book is excellent and I now have two more of his sitting on my bookshelf since finishing that one. The writing is sublime, but it’s also full of mood and the “action” involves lots of brooding and sitting at the bottom of a well. It’s also quite long, but I digress.

My point is that while I did not (by a large margin) read a book a week in 2010, I did read 17 books for the pure joy and enlightenment of reading them last year and I plan to better that this year. I’ll optimistically call it my #bookaweek and publish my progress on Twitter as a little bit of a challenge to myself and while I will earnestly try to read a book every week, I will be satisfied to read 26 or even 18 books in 2011 and you should too!!

Here’s my list from 2010. I should also give credit to Julien for the inspiration. He’s got some good advice for anyone thinking of attempting this – maybe I should reread it today…

Happy 2011 – may it be filled with new adventures!

Contradiction and Ambiguity

estimmel — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 04:00:12 +0000

Brings to mind several conversations I’ve had in the past (and some I’m confident I will have again) but one special, perhaps momentous, conversation stands out. Sadly it has been recounted often enough to be left to the imagination here.

PS – I think this Stephenson guy might have a future. Really enjoying The Diamond Age. (Yes, I know is old. Yes I’ve read his other work. No, not all of it… The books are very long, I’m working on it.)

Home

estimmel — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:40:59 +0000

Really grateful to @sarhar1 for showing me the most excellent video. There’s just so much to love about this song and the people singing it that I won’t even try to put it into words. Just watch it.

Of course a discovery like this can only be followed down the rabbit hole, i.e. YouTube, to discover more of the same, interesting and new (to me) music and imagery. I really like this one as well. Wishing I had some disposable income right about now…

I also kind of dig the title fonts.

Markdown in Notepad++

estimmel — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:02:52 +0000

I recently (recently as in about an hour ago) discovered a way to use Notepad++, my text editor of choice on Windows, to process Markdown files into html without having to jump into DOS and run do it from the command line. I’ve been trying to keep my notes in Markdown for awhile now because I like that I can easily publish them to a blog or webpage without fighting with the markup. I also like the small bit of discipline it gives to my text files and the opportunity to tinker around with scripting in the process. Since I don’t really blog that much or publish any html documents to speak of, it’s more of an affectation than a truely useful exercise. That said, I still find myself writing in Markdown with a lingering feeling that the future is all in a browser.

I also enjoy Notepad++ and, like the web, it feels more powerful and full featured that I currently use. So it keeps my attention. I also like the tabs and persistant workspace it provides while the syntax highlighting and numbered lines make some of the things I do at work (writing AutoCAD, Autolisp and AutoHotKey scripts specifically) much, much easier. I won’t go into all the details, but if you do any scripting and you are doing it in plain Notepad you really need to take a long look at what you are missing.

So, to the point! What you need to do to get this to work on your Windows machine, and I’m going to gloss over a lot of the dirty work here, is the following:

Install Notepad++
Install Perl – I don’t remember why, but I installed Straberry Perl and it seems to work just great.
You could install thomsmits’ Markdown syntax highlighting module for Notepad++ if you want, but you don’t have to. (I’ve only been using it for a few days and I’m not sure it’s as solid as I would like, but it’s something!)
Make sure you have the NppExec plugin installed in Notepad++. I think it’s a default, so not to worry.
Go into Plugins > NppExec > Execute… or just hit F6 and type the following into the script box making sure to put the correct path to wherever your Markdown.pl script lives:
```
perl "C:\Markdown_1.0.1\Markdown.pl" "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"
CON_SAVETO $(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)\$(NAME_PART).html
```
Save and name the script in the NppExec dialog and you are good to go.
To run your script, open a file using Markdown syntax and hit F6 and choose your script (if it doesn’t come up by default) and select OK. Your new file will be saved in the same directory with the same name and the .html file extension.

I really like this and it seems to be working really well. You may have to toggle “No internal messages” in the NppExec menu if you are getting messages in your html file, but I have tested it and even wrote this blog post using this method!

UPDATE 2010.02.19: Fixed the save to code.

Relaxing on a Sunday morning

estimmel — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:30:58 +0000

It’s nice to sit in a cafe and just relax a little. Read a bit, draw… (ok, listen to Audible books and sketch on my iPhone… It’s the future…)

a new form of sketchbook

estimmel — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 01:37:45 +0000

![Sketch by Stef Kardos](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3199887587_8c7fa409cc_m.jpg)

Photo/Sketch by [Stef Kardos](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/)

I love these drawings. Done with an iPhone application called “Brushes.” Installed, but little used on *my* iPhone, [this series](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/sets/72157607051336347/) is quite inspiring. It also makes me miss California.

[Check it out](http://flickr.com/photos/stefsketches/sets/72157607051336347/)

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sadly indeed…

estimmel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:21:15 +0000

So many times I read xkcd and get a glimpse of that once possible future, the one where I pursue higher mathematics and have the intellectual prowess to make jokes that are truly funny, but somehow over my head. It gives me that good kind of anxiety that comes from being surrounded by really smart people. Other times I read it and see the present and it makes me laugh out loud because that’s really funny too (and still contains some pseudo-intellectual chicanery).

Other times, I see my life so clearly in these little stick figure gems that I can barely believe it. (That’s when I start sweeping for bugs…)

This, sadly or not, is not a true story for me, but the circumstances and \ahem\ tendencies are all pretty much par for the course.

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new studio

estimmel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:20:51 +0000

I’ve got a new studio space in Greenpoint. It’s a shared space, but so far I’m mostly there by myself which is sort of nice. I’ve barely moved in so I don’t really have much to show for it, but here’s a little video I made of my first day actually making something in the studio. I made a Digg Button designed by Limor Fried. It’s designed to be reprogrammed, but I haven’t quite finished setting up my studio PC… somehow I can’t find the keyboard… guess it’s back to search the storage unit one of these days…

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