weekends are for leisure

October 24, 2007

College Lawn Evangelists

Filed under: religion — alanszlosek @ 8:05 pm

They speak too loud to be heard. They failed as drama students. They think they’re in a Holy War.

While at UCF I stayed clear of crowds

Catching my attention in this way makes you obnoxious

The above images are from 2005 while attending UCF.

October 15, 2007

Those that Do

Filed under: coding, people, software — Tags: — alanszlosek @ 9:30 pm

Reading blogs filled with opinions on the latest software/language/library tuckers me out. Now, if instead they were contributing to such a project and were hashing out their ideas and/or struggles in public, I’d be on the edge of my seat. Alas, there aren’t enough of those on the net. And really, it’s the nature of a blog to be mundane and mostly insignificant. Notable exceptions noted. So instead, I waste my reading time by keeping up with (active) software projects and hoping to witness progress. People write too well too often about software stuffs; I want to see results. Of course, I’m writing this in my blog, where none of my code lives. Oh well. For that there’s always greaterscope.net.

Continuing on, I’m a big fan of the efforts of Rob Landley. I may not be able to see the code he’s working on but I can read about it, which is good enough for now. It’s comforting just knowing he’s actually doing things. My favorite method (and seemingly his) of contributing to the betterment of computing is by consciously trying to improve software. This isn’t for everybody and many probably see it as less spectacular than coming up with brand-new things but I remain committed. I don’t want to be a revolutionary. The chance that a person will make a truly original contribution seems pretty slim anyway. But it’s not impossible, so even I occasionally entertain those dreams. Improving upon existing concepts just seems a more readily rewarding — and perhaps a more noble — goal.

October 14, 2007

Doing One’s Job

Filed under: Uncategorized — alanszlosek @ 2:56 pm

“I was just doing my job” is a cop-out, used by weak and worthless individuals. Side-stepping blame under the guise of duty/dedication is disgusting. The guards that dealt with Martin Lee Anderson were adhering to their training, but doing so to the point that one ignores the chance to second-guess the appropriateness of an action is a frightening thing. The world is not so black-and-white. Full dedication to duty should never have become an honorable trait.

Blog at WordPress.com.