My Mood.

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

Some Mornings

Some mornings require caffeine. Today is one of them. Tomorrow I have a 10:00 am meeting with someone to discuss some sort of collaboration. I'm not really sure of the details at this point, and I don't imagine its going to be terribly lucrative (if at all), but at this point its all about the networking. If nothing else I hope they come away with a sense of my competence so they will be willing to recommend me to others.

Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed at 10:30 today, so that I'll have an easier time getting up at 8:00 am tomorrow. That wouldn't be a big deal but the recent thaw has convinced my body that spring is here, and now I find it very hard to sleep at night. Some part of me wants to run through the woods and howl at the moon, rather than laying down and sleeping.

So, as a consequence, I had roughly 6 hours sleep last night, and am drinking actual coffee (rather than my usual simulated pseudo-kaf replacement drink™), to help me wake up.

I am the duck.

Consider the duck. Calm placid and serene on top, legs churning like mad out of sight below the surface. Thats been me for the last month or so. I'm not sure how or why but I suddenly got motivated to start working on a bunch of projects that have been languishing. A large amount of what has been delaying me is the learning curves. Each of my projects requires me to learn yet-another-toolset that I don't already know, and for some reason I just couldn't get motivated.

Well, lately it seems that I am motivated. Not much visible has resulted, because mostly I'm working on things like learning the intricacies of CSS2 or PHP (both of which I 'know' well enough for some purposes, just not for the current projects). The current effort has mostly been expended on the Rexpolo site (which is why at any moment it may look like crap), but that's just a good excuse. Many of the features I'm working on will be used in the redesign of the pooq website (and so I shall soon be asking my fellow pooqists for content (and not necessarily in html format either), but not quite yet), and some will be used on a minor commercial project.

There is also finally movement on my <secret>major commercial project</secret>, which I hope to get to properly this month.

Now lets just hope this enthusiasm lasts! I am working hard to convince myself that my lack of productivity for most of the last 3 years was entirely due to being stressed out of my mind by 20 years in the work-a-day world, and it has simply taken me this long to recover.Time will tell.

Latest Column

I just published today's technaut column: Online Form Design.

Why Flabbergast Me with a Fencepost!

I just heard the news that I'm going to be an Uncle!

It seems that my younger brother Vaughan and wife are now expecting, so contrary to all of my expectations, one of us three sons is going to breed!

Funny Cats.

Thanks to _grey_knight, here are some funny cats. (Sorry, its in Windows WMV format. It wasn't funny enough to spend and hour converting it to something Linux friendly...)

Long Day.

Its been a long day today. I'm not really complaining, mind you. It just seems like a lot happened today, and I got a lot done. Mostly it was minor stuff I've been meaning to get around to for ages, but its stuff that I am quite happy to be done with for now.

And now, I should be thinking of bed. Its already looking like I'll be busy Tuesday (talking to someone about business ideas), Wednesday (talking to someone about business ideas), Thursday (going to a meetup for discussing business...)

Now if only some of this would make me money, I'd be happy!