Losing a loved one is a catastrophic event. It’s so catastrophic that its occurrence inevitably divides one’s life into a “pre-” and a “post-”; in my case, that is, there are two high-level categories of events: those that happened before my father died, and those that happened after. Everything else is minutiæ

I’m prompted to revisit these feelings because the father of an old acquaintance died on Saturday, relatively suddenly of a brain tumor, and being at the wake today made me think once again of my own experiences in May. The friend’s father was 53, a scant two years older than my father. It doesn’t help that I dreamed last night I visited my father just before he died, and called him on the day it happened, warning him: I have no idea how the dream ended, but clearly I know how things transpired in real life.

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§2313 · August 31, 2008 · 3 comments · Tags: ,

The “GMAT tomorrow” edition

  1. Fastball – [The Harsh Light Of Day #11] Don’t Give Up On Me
  2. Do Make Say Think – [Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn #03] Auberge le Mouton Noir
  3. Novembre – [Dreams D'Azur #06] Swim Seagull In The Sky
  4. Neurosis – [Through Silver In Blood #05] Locust Star
  5. Ignition – [Redshift #02] Make Your Move
  6. Sondre Lerche – [Don't Be Shallow #03] I Know I Know
  7. Sufjan Stevens – [Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State #08] Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)
  8. Samuel Barber – [Orchestral Works, Volume 4 #02] [Concerto for Piano and Orchestra] – II. Canzone. Moderato
  9. Anton Bruckner – [Symphonie Nr. 7 / Te Deum CD2 #02] Symphonie Nr. 7 in E-Dur – IV – Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht schnell
  10. Mono – [Travel In Constants Vol. 22 #04] Little Boy (1945 – Future)
§2320 · August 29, 2008 · 2 comments · Tags: , ,

Internet Explorer

Firefox

Safari

I personally think the friendly rivalry between the open-source Webkit engine (which powers Safari, among other things) and Mozilla (the Gecko engine, actually) is one of the best things to happen to browser development in years. The constant one-upsmanship can only lead to better browsers. Well, Internet Explorer will constantly be the limiting factor, but we can dream, can’t we?

The latest thing to hit browser source repos is javascript engine improvement based on something called “trace trees”: essentially, javascript gets translated into native bytecode. The Webkit engine made the announcement a few months ago, with code codenamed “Squirrelfish,” promising massive improvements. That article’s also got a pretty good writeup.

Open Source being what it is, it was only a matter of time before Mozilla announced their own version of a trace-tree-based javascript engine. John Resig has a good writeup, as done Brendan Eich.

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Neither Here Nor There Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 1993
Pages: 256

When my girlfriend went to Germany this summer, her tales of Germany’s quirks made me think immediately of Bill Bryson and one of his early books, Neither Here Nor There. Realizing that I last read it before the start of this meme back in 2005, I thought it would be the perfect time to dust it off and enjoy it all over again.

There are startling bits about Neither Here Nor There, especially if you’ve read a lot of Bryson’s more recent work. It’s downright bawdy at times, which doesn’t bother me, but does come as a bit of a shock. The only other book which approaches this style is A Walk in the Woods, I suppose because these are both largely narrative books, rather than the more detached kind of exposition you might find in one of his books about language.

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§2168 · August 24, 2008 · 4 comments · Tags: , , , , ,

The “Two in a row!” edition

  1. In Flames – [The Jester Race ~ Black Ash Inheritance #01] Moonshield
  2. The Gathering – [if_then_else #10] Morphia’s Waltz
  3. Opeth – [My Arms, Your Hearse #06] Demon of the Fall
  4. Novembre – [Materia #08] The Promise
  5. Radiohead – [Pablo Honey #08] Vegetable
  6. Kayo Dot – [Choirs Of The Eye #04] Wayfarer
  7. Live – [Throwing Copper #04] Iris
  8. Pineapple Thief – [12 Stories Down #11] Take Our Hands
  9. Jaga Jazzist – [A Livingroom Hush #06] Low Battery
  10. The White Stripes – [Icky Thump #04] Conquest
§2222 · August 22, 2008 · 3 comments · Tags: , ,