A great essay...

Read "What You'll Wish You'd Known". I've never read anything by Paul Graham, but this is right on the button. Quote:

Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox.

I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.

It's a long essay, but its worth it. I see parts of my behavior - and I think this articulates what I haven't ever figured out. At last I know why I'm weird.

Unfortunately, my interests are spread all-over-the-place.

Oh well, I'll never get bored!

Irony

It's ironic that I emailed my Dad about Picasa and made a note that it hasn't been updated for a while and wondered if it would stick around for long...

Well, version 2.0 just got released.

Did you know that command-line programs have Easter Eggs?

I didn't know that command-line programs also had Easter Eggs. Really!

I've been playing with MythTV and followed the Fedora Myth(TV)ology directions. Having never used the apt-get tool, I messed with it a little bit. I'd noticed this bit about super cow powers but didn't follow up on it. I guess that it is an Easter Egg in apt-get. Go figure!!

$ apt-get help
apt 0.5.15cnc6 for linux i386 compiled on Oct 3 2004 19:42:01
... snip ...
This APT has Super Cow Powers.

$ apt-get moo

       (__)

       (oo)

 /------\/

/ |     || 

*  /\---/   ~~   ~~ 

...."Have you mooed today?"...

Red eye reduction

My dad called me today asking about what software I use for red eye removal. Evidentally, the software he uses does not modify the JPEG image, but creates a small file that contains the edits. Presumably, you then need the specific software program to view the modified image.

This was my two-bit review for my dad:

The Microsoft Office Picture manager - well, it sucks for red eye removal.

Picasa is a free package. Google bought the company last year and the Picasa editing software is free. However, I don’t think it’s been updated since – if that continues, I suspect it will lag behind. However, as of today, the abilities of the program are pretty neat. It looks like it will run on Windows 98. The only picture it couldn’t handle was PC280053; apparently one of the red eyes was too pink for detection. Otherwise, it seemed pretty good for red eye reduction.
Download Picasa

I then putzed around and saw that I had Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Kit. This was pretty easy - but you need to 'import' the images into the program… although, when I edited the red eye in the PC280053 file, it saved the file as “PC280053_edited.JPG” in the same directory as the original picture. So I suspect “import” is just an akward term. The red eye tool was really easy, however. Just draw a box around both eyes, click a button, and it worked.
Download Adobe Photoship Album Starter Kit

I’d download both of these today just in case they go away at some point...

These are (currently) both programs that are free of charge.