Jay McGavren’s Journal

Those of you who like gangster flicks should definitely Netflix yourself a copy of City of God. It’s the next Goodfellas, only in Portugese.

> From: hr_drone@mycompany.com
> To: All Mail Users
>
> Did you know September is National Fruit and Vegetable
> Month? To reinforce the importance of these food groups we
> encourage you to eat at least five servings of fruits and
> vegetables each day throughout September.
>
> Each Friday, for the rest of the month, we will be
> providing plates full of your favorite fruits. Feel free
> to enjoy them and pick up a flyer that outlines some of the
> many benefits.

Wow… (sniff…) I’ve never worked for a company that actually cared whether I got enough fiber.

Got this message via Flickr today…

> I am writing to let you know that five of your photos with
> a creative commons license have been short-listed for
> inclusion in the second edition of our Schmap Kauai Guide,
> to be published mid-October 2006.

I published my stuff under the Creative Commons license because, while it’s good enough to circulate, it’s not professional enough to charge for.

They look completely legit, partly because the license I agreed to in the final submission has these key terms:

> (c) Schmap shall, to the extent reasonably practicable,
> provide Internet link(s) to your Photos.
> …
> (f) Schmap shall continue to make its destination/local
> guides available at no cost to end users.

That’s right; not only do I get credited and linked to, but in the event they start to charge end users for these guides, my license to them to use my photos is automatically revoked. I assume they’ll be making some profit from ad revenues, but doesn’t Flickr as well? I’m just happy to have people looking at the product of my hobby.

I’m also excited from the standpoint that I hope to one day be an entrepeneur like these guys. Using this Creative Commons content means they don’t have to employ an army of photographers, unlike traditional travel guides. Maybe when it’s time for me to start my business, I’ll be able to do it all by myself.

Found a new emulator called pSX last night. It’s the first PlayStation emulator to bring quality and compatibility on par with those available for older systems. Anyway, it inspired me to break out a few old games…

Anyone else remember Battle Area Toshinden? That was actually one of the main reasons I first purchased a Playstation. Well, I went back and played it last night, and it’s a lot worse than I remember. I mean, it’s REALLY bad. And yet great at the same time. I cracked up all over again as Fo Fei fell out of the ring during his win pose.

HotelDescriptiveContent hotelContent = factory.createOTAHotelDescriptiveContentNotifRQHotelDescriptiveContentsHotelDescriptiveContent()

I hate code generators. Hate them!

For a while there I was telling people I was an agnostic. This was out of a desire to avoid arguments at parties, and a desire to avoid people thinking I was trying to convert them as they would convert me. No more.

I do not believe in God, or any sort of supernatural beings. My statement that they do not exist is not an act of faith; it is due to the complete lack of any reliable evidence to the contrary.

It was actually an interview with Douglas Adams published in The Salmon of Doubt that first inspired me to take another look at the issue:

> An Interview with Douglas Adams, Winter 1998-1999
> “I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that
> any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal
> and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of
> rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there,
> have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that
> it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” -
> then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a
> thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in
> the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted
> radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got,
> and we’ve now got vastly better ones.”
http://www.americanatheist.org/win98-99/T2/silverman.html

Since then, I’ve found countless writings that put into words the thoughts that were already tumbling around at the back of my mind:

16 Common Myths About Atheists
http://wayofthemind.dehumanizer.com/2006/08/15/16-common-myths-about-atheists/

Understanding Delusion
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/your-delusion.htm

IT Conversations: Sam Harris
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail785.html

So from now on, I will wear my badge proudly. I am an atheist.

Yaaay! iTunes 7 has “skip count” and “last skipped”! This could render ratings obsolete.

Too bad I lost our iPod Shuffle a week or so ago. I may have to order another. (Damn loose slacks pockets… In fact, damn slacks altogether; I wanna wear jeans to work!)

Well, or maybe the Open Travel Alliance is.

hc.getFacilityInfo().getRestaurants().getRestaurant().get(0).getCuisineCodes().getCuisineCode().get(0).getCode()

//KILL ME NOW, GOD!
hc.getPolicies().getPolicy().get(0).getGuaranteePaymentPolicy().getGuaranteePayment().get(0).getDescription().get(0).getTextOrImageOrURL().get(0)

JavaBeans says that if an object has a boolean attribute Foobar, then the getter method for that attribute must be named “isFoobar()” rather than “getFoobar()”. That makes sense, I guess.

But when objects were designed without the intention of making them JavaBeans (such as XML Schema types that were converted to Java through code generators), you wind up with lovely names like “isOfferBreakfast()”.

Well, I suppose “getOfferBreakfast()” is misleading too. :P Maybe this whole notion of accessor methods is just plain wrong. What we need is a language where you can specify onGet() and onSet() events for object attributes, and only in the rare cases they’re needed.

I wanted a dead-tree version of my LiveJournal, because I want my kids to be able to read it someday, and I know a soft-copy will go poof well before then. LJ’s own export feature excludes comments, and I’m not about to download one month at a time, so I had to keep looking. Fortunately, a quick Google produced this:

SourceForge.net: ljArchive
“ljArchive is a tool for downloading, browsing, and analyzing journal entries and comments from LiveJournal (or LiveJournal clones).”
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ljarchive/

I was able to export the entire journal (comments included) to both XML and HTML formats. One single file for each. A couple more clicks, and the whole thing was printed (well, I also had to refill the paper tray - it was 117 pages).