Some more big news about GreasemonkCC. First and foremost, versioning numbers are supported. Some pages still use the older Creative Commons 1.0 license, while really new sites seem to use 2.5. this detects and displays that information in the bar. For the two of you who actually use them, sampling licenses are also detected. GreasemonkCC .8. Visit the programming page for more information.
All sorts of updates for GreasemonkCC. First and foremost: detection of RDF metadata. The Creative Commons license generator spits out a "comment" section that is hidden within website code; this section is in RDF, and GreasemonkCC now detects it. Also, code has been mostly rewritten into a much more elegant form. Finally, GreasemonkCC now detects Public Domain licenses (for material that is out of copyright date). GreasemonkCC .75. Visit the programming page for more information.
One of the subjects which is most interesting to me, quriously enough, patent and copyright law. I've written an essay about which I would encourage everyone to check out: Patent and Copyright Monopolies in the Age of the Internet. It's really a very dynamic subject which has the ability to profoundly change the environment we live in. At this point in time, I think it's at one of those nebulous stages where it could go either way, towards a fascist Orwellian future where all culture is controlled by massive corporations or towards a distributed, democratic network with culture shared and altered by the general population. Anyway, check it out.
I've got a few new updates. Amazon TotalUsed has hit Version 0.3, with support for specific searches such as book-only. GreasmonkCC is at Version 0.52, with additional support for detecting CC licenses. Finally, I've added a really small script that removes the annoying random page excerpts from Amazon's book search results, titled Amazon Excerpt Gone .1. Visit the programming page for more information.
Creative Commons is a group I greatly admire - I think that intellectual property issues are one of the really unknown problems facing the country. Part of the problem is that people just don't know that an alternative to the standard copyright exists; if they do, they probably think the entire subject is boring. I wouldn't have blamed them, but for a while I've been reading articles, news blurbs, and books and it really is fascinating. In any event, I would encourage you to download this script and please let me know if you find any sites which display invalid information or don't display licensing data. You can download GreasemonkCC 0.5 or visit the programming page.
A9 is a pretty cool new search engine created by Amazon. My big problem with it is that it places ads inside the search. This little applet will remove those advertisements (leaving it completely ad-free, actually). Feature-complete, but Amazon might change their code in the future, or there might be errors. You can download A9 AdRemover .1 or visit the programming page.
Just wrote a small script that removes the annoying right-hand bar from DeviantART (it just contains ads and "featured deviations.") Feature-complete, but deviantART might change their code in the future or I might discover bugs. You can download DeviantART Wide .1 or visit the programming page.
I've expanded the greasemonkey extension I wrote about; it now also works on general searches. I fixed a few bugs in percent difference, too. You can download Amazon TotalUsed .25 or visit the programming page.
Virtually every non-game program I use is freeware, whether it be web browsing, programming, multimedia, or download related. I've made a list of the Top 10 Freeware Programs I currently use. I recommend all of them extremely highly, especially, foobar and vlc, which I rarely see anyone else using.
Regardless of what this site might show, I have been busy. I'm still working on that Norwegian update I promised, but the short of it is that you can learn the grammar and a relatively powerful vocabulary of a language (or at least, of Norwegian) in a week of relatively dedicated study. The big problem is retention over time, and I stopped studying Norwegian after that week. Especially with nobody to practice with, it's difficult to really hone your skills.
I've managed to shuffle my scheudle to allow me more time on leisure pursuits, especially programming and writing. I'm finally offering a program download on this site, although it's just a Greasemonkey script for Mozilla Firefox. If you don't know what Greasemonkey is, I would encourage you to check it out - it's a very powerful technology. Plus, you can install my script, which is just something that shows used price+shipping on amazon, so you can easily compare prices for used books or DVDs and new ones. More information is available on my programming page.
I've finally got a bit of time on my hands between midterms and other assignments, so I've decided to try an experiment I've been planning on for some time: to learn a foreign language in a week. I've always thought that learning a new language (especially one which shares the Latin alphabet, or most of it), is much simpler than they always teach in school. I mean, it has to be, right? Who really cares about genitive, prepossessive, nominative, all sorts of cases, genders, etc. For the most part, unless you're writing high-level stuff, you can fudge that, especially in speech, when things get slurred and rushed over anyways. Maybe you'll sound like a foreigner, but people are pretty understanding if you get your point across.
I chose, essentially at random, Norwegian as a language to try. I speak fairly fluent english (hopefully). Ich spreche Deutsch, aber es ist ganz schlecht. Es ist was ich habe in hoch schule gelernt. (I also speak german, but it's quite bad. It is what I learned in high school). Norwegian, as it turned out, was an excellent choice: it seems to be a sort of german-english hybrid, as spoken by a very lazy person. That is, about half of the vocabulary has similarities to german and english, but the ends of most words are left off or silent. My ultimate decision was based on - strange though it sounds - the thought that "Vikings are cool," "Scandinavian languages look awesome," and the fact that I obtained a Pimsleur course in Norwegian (only 10 lessons, the "fast and easy" course).
This is my second day, and I've had to revise my goals to something more reasonable - to obtain reasonable proficiency in reading and hearing Norwegian (but mostly reading proficiency). This is because of a few things, but especially because speaking a language requires a much deeper understanding of grammar and vocabulary (ie, no reasoning things out), and also because I'm unlikely to encounter anyone who speaks Norwegian (only 5 million speakers worldwide). Writing a foreign language isn't as time sensitive but requires an even deeper understanding of grammar. The Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian) are all mutually intelligible, except for Finnish, which is supposed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn (along with Turkish), being in a completely different and very different language group. Icelandic is, fortunately, another language group as well (I wouldn't want to mar the beauty of Sigur Ros by understanding the lyrics, although I've noticed that thanks (Takk) is the same in both languages).
Nonetheless, I'm very impressed with the amount of progress I've made after putting in several hours (maybe a total of 8?), and some additional research. If all goes according to plan, I'll be able to put out the schedule I followed, how I learned and so forth, for those who are interested. Again, Norsk has very few speakers, so resources were limited. Assuming I obtain reasonable proficiency, I'll try to keep that up and gradually expand that, while I learn a language with far more speakers, either French or Italian.
Anyway, the actual reason for this middle-of-the-journey update is actually to make a note of some interesting things I noticed... cognates and false cognates among the different languages. These are things that made me smirk a bit. First, gift is, in English, a present (obviously). In Norwegian, gift refers to a marriage. In German, gift means poison. I'm sure you might say those are actually synonyms! Second, I was baffled when I came across the word bukser in the middle of a sentence with several other unfamiliar words. What could it mean? Only when I discovered that it was pronounced bok-ser, did it make sense. Now I know where the english term "boxer" for underwear comes from (evidently, not from the athlete, boxer, although that would also make a reasonable amount of sense). For what it's worth, my vintage OED is unwilling to settle the dispute, and doesn't even include "boxers" as a word.
Time has a way of getting away. Especially when I'm given an excuse to delay something, procrastination comes naturally. I keep meaning to add stuff, but now is when I finally get around to it. The following is a laundry-list of things I've added and tweaked. First, I've reviewed two movies and a book: Bill Murray's quiet, depressing Broken Flowers, the innovative Koyaanisqatsi, and Terry Prachett's Thud!. Second, I've added two paragraphs to my essay on power that expand its scope substantially. Finally, I tweaked the FMLA website in my portfolio so it works properly in Windows.
I love Terry Pratchett's style, and his Night Watch didn't disappoint. It was a gripping book with lots and lots of little anecdotal insights.
I think that a frank, well thought out and logical examination of the news is one of the best things you can do. If you ask what people's motivations might be, you can figure out an awful lot about what certain groups are doing; things become transparent. I frequently use the rule of thumb that "all individuals desire power," when reading the news, but I've decided that this is wrong in Power: Examining Common Assumptions. Not that this changes my analyses - I think that all people in the news want power, but for society in general, I think a lot of people don't care about power.
Last night was the first snowfall since I bought my digital camera, so I had some great opportunities, and I took over a hundred photographs at a local park this morning (1 GB memory cards are handy). There are five or six I'm proud of, and I put two photoshops and one photograph online. You can view them from my portfolio, or direct-click to see Frozen Vista, Winter Tree 1 or Winter Tree 2.
I just finished reading Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet and wrote a review of the book. Briefly, this isn't as good a book as Microserfs or Eleanor Rigby, but it's still worth looking at, especially if you crave Douglas Coupland's style of writing.
I love eating cereal a great deal, but I'm always pained by the fact that some people seem to enjoy pouring their cereal on top of milk, as opposed to pouring milk on their cereal. I suppose I'm quarrelsome, but some people have a difference of opinions, and so I end up in repetitive and circular philosophical arguments. I decided to settle the issue in a definitive matter in The Cereal/Milk Relationship: A Temporal Perspective
I guess reviews aren't exactly covered in the categories I already have, so I've added another page for reviews. I just finished an excellent book: The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. I'm trying to stay away from formulaic reviews - some authors can really write engrossing book reviews that are enjoyable on their own - Anthony Burgess, for instance. It's very subtle to keep the review interesting while still recommending or disparaging the book, and I think I might be a bit heavyhanded.
Imagine that you're throwing the ultimate party. Who are the dinner guests you'd like to invite. Spanning history just has too many people, so I've limited my choices to men who were alive in the twentieth century. I'll probably have another list of women in the same time period at some point. It's worth noting that I took into account personality as well as achievements. I tend to favour Rennaissance Men, men who did a lot of things fairly well, or who would otherwise be interesting. If I hadn't stressed personality and likability, someone like Kubrick probably would have made the list.
Here's an excerpt from an interview with Neal Stephenson - a tremendous author of science fiction/cyberpunk:
We are in a position akin to that of early physicians who could see that people were getting sick but couldn’t do anything about it, because they didn’t understand the underlying causes. They knew of a few tricks that seemed to work. For example, nailing up plague houses tended to limit the spread of plague. But even the smart doctors tended to fall under the sway of pet theories that were wrong, such as the idea that diseases were caused by imbalanced humors or bad air. Once that happened, they ignored evidence that contradicted their theory. They became so invested in that theory that they treated any new ideas as threats. But from time to time you’d see someone like John Snow, who would point out, “Look, everyone who draws water from Well X is getting cholera.” Then he went and removed the pump handle from Well X and people stopped getting cholera. They still didn’t understand germ theory, but they were getting closer.
We can make a loose analogy to the way that people have addressed the problem of power disorders. We don’t really understand them. We know that there are a couple of tricks that seem to help, such as the rule of law and separation of powers. Beyond that, people tend to fall under the sway of this or that pet theory. And so you’ll get perfectly intelligent people saying, “All of our problems would be solved if only the workers controlled the means of production,” or what have you. Once they’ve settled on a totalizing political theory, they see everything through that lens and are hostile to other notions.
I guess I just found this really uplifting, or maybe naive. Because with politics, people have different goals. Some people want to fulfill an ideology, some people just want reasonable conditions, and some people want power. On the other hand, with medicine, everyone wants life, or in any event can get behind medical technology. I think the analogy falls apart, although I wish it wouldn't.
I'm still rearranging stuff and moving things around. Given that I'm unaware how many people actually look at this site (anyone?), I don't think it matters too much at this point.
It's worth noting that Time Magazine said Battlestar Galactica was the best TV Show of 2005, and I don't think I'd disagree. Galactica has compelling characters, an interesting plot that actually moves, an overall arc and satisfying episode arcs. Plus there's always the allure of distant planets, unknown stars, and intergalactic travel. It's nice to see a show this deserving be listed first.
I hate to say this, but I'm glad that a show like Lost wasn't first. Lost is a lot of fun to watch, but I don't think any of the questions in the first few episodes (of last season) have been answered. In fact, the only question that was answered in Lost was "What's in the hatch." Where do the polar bears come from? Why is the island there? Who are the others? et al.
I had a take-home extra-credit Political Science final (I wish more tests were like that) and one of the essay subjects was revolutions in various countries. I've always thought that revolutions require a great deal of support from the population. That is, if the population doesn't support the revolution or a new form of government overwhelmingly, it will fail.
I got a bit off topic in my essay, but I think I formalized my thinking a little bit, so that's online in the essays section as of now. I'd like to make it a bit more detailed and perhaps cite sources for it at some point in the future. So watch out for the rough edges in Revolutions in the Modern Age
I've always thought that the people with the closest connections shared common interests. If people enjoy the same things, or idolize the same people, I think they tend to get along great - whether its because they have similar temperaments, similar weaknesses, or simply because they have more to talk about (and more to recommend to one another). Of course it isn't a particularly accurate index, because many things which people love tend to be very obscure.
I've always been a fan of top ten lists - they give enough flexibility to express oneself while still limiting the number of selections of a certain item. One of my favourite authors, Douglas Coupland, uses a "Jeopardy Dream Board" as a way of introducing everyone in his novel Microserfs - this is basically a "top 6 topics the person loves."
So I decided to start a page of top tens, and to kickstart it, I have my selection of the Top Ten Albums of 2005. I suppose its a bit cliche, but if you enjoy a few of the bands or trust my taste in music, you might find something that interests you. It's worth pointing out that my favourite album of 2005, The Wedding Present's Take Fountain is head and shoulders above everything else.
So I just decided to see if anyone had wandered onto my page in search of information on socialism or political thought following World War Two (See The Fall of Socialism). Also, I was curious to see how well the exact title of my essay "The Fall of Socialism" ranked on google. I was shocked, therefore, to find that one of those "we write your essays for you" sites had taken my essay (complete with sources), and was now selling it for $21.95. Now, I'm not mad, and frankly I'm oddly flattered, but I'm wondering what sort of ethical behaviour this is. Because it clearly involves copyright infringement. Furthermore - I wrote that essay for a particular class.
Supposing I had posted the essay online before I submitted it to the professor, what would have happened? The essay site might have taken it and removed their reference to me, the original author, and it would have been indexed by google. The professor might use a plagiarism-tracking program to see if I had plagiarized - many universities use them by default now. It would have come up with a red flag, and I'd be in a lot of trouble for "stealing" the essay I had just written. And if I was a professor, I'm not sure what I would do. I'd like to think that I'd give the benefit of the doubt to my student, but the circumstances are suspicious enough.
The moral is to be careful with what you write and where you write it; I know that in the future, I certainly will be.
It seems that I do more work on layouts for this site than actual content, but hopefully that will change soon. I'm looking to start up a small website design business, and I need to develop a portfolio, so right now I'm looking for charity sites that need work. I'm already the webmaster for the Stony Brook Crew Website and I've got another project in the works. I'd like to develop 3-4 more charity sites with a variety of different layouts, themes, and so forth. If you're interested, please let me know ( Rob@Litzke.com ).
For a long time I've been in a sort of stasis and I'm trying to fight my way out; once you become apathetic about things it's a difficult rut to get out of. Recently I've been frequenting Steve Pavlina's Blog as well as John Stone Fitness, both of which are inspiring websites, and both of which are remarkably useful if you follow their recommendations. I'm far from diligent in applying myself, and for every two steps forward I take one back, but the net gain is still one step.
It really doesn't seem that long since I've updated this site - has it been 2 months already? I have got a few things accomplished: I finally finished the (beta) of my "Orange Page", designed to be submitted to CSS Zen Garden; content is therefore not under my control, only style. A few non-essential capabilities are lost with Internet Explorer, so (as always) Firefox is recommended. If you notice any problem on your particular browser (not stylistic problems, but technical ones), please, please, please email me at Rob@Litzke.com.
Thats right, I finally registered www.litzke.com as my domain, something I've been meaning to do for a long time. My email address is therefore Rob@Litzke.com, although my other address works just as well.
I've basically finished my freshman year of college - it passed surprisingly quickly, but I can't say I'm sad that it's over. There have been a lot of things I want to work on - a few Java programs, a bunch of web designs and tricks, and a whole ton of books to read. I still have a few finals left, but I've installed a tiny script and written a quick file sheet for printing pages. You can check it out at the bottom of text-heavy pages on the footer, labelled as "printer edition." It basically cuts out everything but the body of the page, and formats that in a printer-friendly way.
I'm also planning on finishing that design from the last update soon - I think there are some things I could do to make it look more interesting, but there is a fine line between exciting and juvenile.
Ok, some news. I've been doing some major work on a new layout for CSS Zen Garden - hopefully good enough to be recognized as an official design. I'm really proud of it, thus far. I'll put it up in a few days. Actually, I'm thinking of using this new layout as the homepage for a web design business I'm considering starting and running over the summer - hopefully some small businesses or people who want to put up photos and everything on a professional-looking page will be interested. (That applies to you people reading this :) ). Contact me if you're interested.
I've also added a new essay on The Fall of Socialism in the Aftermath of World War II. I had to write a research paper for WRT 102, and I decided to expand my thoughts on Modern American Politics
I finally got the website working correctly, after having some issues with the web server that my college was hosting it with (Mozilla Firefox, apparently, isn't as trusting as Internet Explorer and needs the server to verify that external stylesheets are, in fact, stylesheets).
I've also filled in all the current pages (essays, programming, artwork, resume) to a reasonable degree. I've left off personal information in my resume, contact me if you want a copy and have a reason for me to send it to you.
