tadhg.com
tadhg.com
 

Archive for the 'Blog' Category

“Leavetaking”

16:40 24 Feb 2013. Updated: 14:57 05 Apr 2013

There had been rumors of war, fears that the conflict raging to the south and east would reach out for us, but we didn’t expect anything to happen soon. As I went to bed that night, I felt a mild unease, a concern about what the next months would bring.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , , , , , ]    

“Morodin and the Thorn of Nothing”

23:54 17 Feb 2013. Updated: 09:35 15 Mar 2013

The shovels made steady progress. Sern and Jerym, the two locals I’d hired to dig, grumbled at my not helping, but digging is what I was paying them coin for. I needed to be free to keep an eye on them both, as they wouldn’t have been there with me if they’d been trustworthy. The lanterns I’d brought provided enough light, and the pile of dirt to one side grew until there was a solid noise, wood struck by metal.

I stood. They looked back at me, and I told them to clear off all the dirt first. More grumbling, but they did it, and when I nodded they levered the wood apart, ripping it up and revealing the body inside.
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , , , , , ]    

“How Afuegan Lost his Eye”

23:32 10 Feb 2013

In the pantheon of old Athrai, still one of the dominant Q’Resti faiths, Afuegan, brother to the god of war Atargan, is the god of archers. Afuegan is also the god of accuracy, the pursuit of excellence for its own sake, and monomania.

His singularity of focus, and his occasional blindness to larger concerns, are both represented by the fact that he is missing an eye. This is one account of how he lost it.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , , , , , ]    

Heartbreaker in New Orleans

23:38 03 Feb 2013. Updated: 00:41 04 Feb 2013

When I moved to Ireland from the US as a kid, I had never gone to a football game. I don’t really remember watching any football on television either, and was mostly aware of the sport via playing it—the two-hand touch version—on the street[1]. As a result of this, I had no defined pro football allegiance[2].

I was still attracted to the game as a spectator, and was able to see short snippets of it on Channel Four, a British television station that did a weekly hour-long highlight show covering the NFL. In the absence of regional holds on my loyalty, I gravitated towards teams for stylistic reasons. This was the MontanaRice era, and I completely fell for the precision passing attack of the San Francisco 49ers. They’ve been my favorite football team since.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , , ]    

Novak Djokovic Wins 3rd Consecutive Australian Open

22:42 27 Jan 2013

Today Novak Djovokic won his sixth Grand Slam title, defeating Andy Murray 6–7 (2), 7–6 (3), 6–3, 6–2 in the Australian Open men’s final. In doing so he became the only male player in the Open era to win three consecutive Australian Opens.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, ]    

Favorite Films of 2012

23:39 20 Jan 2013. Updated: 00:40 21 Jan 2013

I started keeping track of the films I watched last year, after not having done so since 2005. I think I watched more than usual in 2012, but without numbers from past years it’s hard to tell… As with my book ratings, the ratings reflect how much I enjoyed the film at the time, and not my judgment of the film’s merits.

I rated four films 90%: The Cabin in the Woods, The Guard, Moonrise Kingdom, and the 2003 director’s cut of Alien.
[more...]

Permalink     2 Comments     [, ]    

Favorite Books of 2012

22:43 13 Jan 2013

2012 was another year of little reading for me. I finished 37 books, with long periods of not reading anything at all.

The best book I read was James Gleick’s The Information, a history of information and our ways of conceptualizing it. Some of it was familiar to me, but much of it was new, and all of it fascinating. I highly recommend it.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , ]    

2012 Goals Review/2013 Goals

20:51 06 Jan 2013

I had five goals for 2012 and didn’t achieve many; arguably only one. I don’t feel too bad about this, partly because the most positive things for me last year weren’t related to anything on that list. Even so, I hope to do better this year.
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , , , , , , ]    

Back Next Year

19:19 30 Dec 2012

I’m still on vacation; regular posting should resume next week. Wherever you are, I hope you’ve been enjoying some time off, and I hope you have a fantastic 2013.

Permalink     Comment     []    

A Joke Explained

19:06 23 Dec 2012

Sometimes, jokes need explanation; TV Tropes says you’re not supposed to explain the punchline, just the context, but in the case of this joke the two aren’t really separable. Furthermore, this one requires a great deal of broad knowledge in order to make sense; more breadth of knowledge than any other joke I’ve encountered so far. This became clear to me in my relating it to American friends; I didn’t notice the amount you need to know for it while I was living in Ireland[1].
[more...]

Permalink     2 Comments     [, , , , ]    

2012 Winter Holiday

17:13 16 Dec 2012

Light posting for the next while, because I’m on vacation. I hope I see you over the holidays; either way, have fun!

Permalink     Comment     [, ]    

What I Want From “Bookmarks”

23:50 09 Dec 2012

I mentioned last week that I wanted to work on “better bookmarking” as my next coding project, basing my approach off of my own thoughts and recent Mozilla research. Now I want to examine what that project might be like.
[more...]

Permalink     4 Comments     [, , , , , , ]    

jsCheckMate

23:42 02 Dec 2012. Updated: 21:04 03 Dec 2012

I wrote a JavaScript utility that lets you create a rectangle on a web page by dragging your mouse cursor, and then toggles the state of all checkboxes under the cursor. If you’ve ever had to deal with forms that have lots and lots of checkboxes, you’ll know why I decided such a thing was necessary.
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , , , , ]    

Too Many Backups?

22:55 25 Nov 2012

Given how often I’ve stressed the need to back up your stuff, it may seem odd for me to claim that it’s possible to have too many of them. But in some senses it is, which is why I’m writing this post as I’m copying files to my main hard drive from a virtual machine running Ubuntu that’s mounting an OpenBSD drive via a USB-SATA adapter[1].
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , , , , ]    

Djokovic Wins 2012 Tennis YEC

19:37 18 Nov 2012

Last Monday Novak Djokovic won his second ATP World Tour Finals title, defeating Federer in straight sets, 7–6 (6), 7–5. Although it had spectacular moments, the match wasn’t spectacular throughout, and the performance of both players was uneven. It was Federer’s second loss in the YEC final match, but this one didn’t have the drama of his classic five-set loss to Nalbandian in 2005[1].
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, ]    

Moving tadhg.com

21:38 11 Nov 2012

Since my primary server died in February this year, I’ve been running tadhg.com on a cheap virtual machine. That’s worked fine, but the original server came back to life quite some time ago, and today I finally completed the process of moving tadhg.com back to it. The move is now complete, and hopefully you’re not seeing anything unexpected[1]. This post is about what’s involved in that move and what I’ve tried to improve along the way.
[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , , , , , , ]    

Portland Waffles

23:03 04 Nov 2012

Brief post today, as I’m on vacation in Portland. I highly recommend the Belgian waffles at sympatica; you should get the apple syrup on them rather than the green tomato syrup.

The election is on Tuesday, and you might like to review the California ballot measure overview I wrote last week.

Permalink     Comment     [, , , ]    

November 2012 California Ballot Measures

23:51 28 Oct 2012

I’m more interested in the state-level measures than I am in this year’s elections at any level, and this is how I’m going to vote on them. Quick highlights: YES on 34, NO on 35, YES on 36.
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , ]    

Chrome Jellyfish

23:44 21 Oct 2012. Updated: 00:46 22 Oct 2012

Another image this week. This is an old favorite of mine I recently rediscovered:

Chrome Jellyfish

Permalink     Comment     []    

Twists and Turns

23:54 14 Oct 2012

No article tonight; instead, here’s a photo of one of the world’s oldest trees:

Ancient Bristlecone Pine on peak.

Permalink     1 Comment     []    

Tools for Writing reStructuredText in Vim

22:43 07 Oct 2012. Updated: 21:55 25 Oct 2012

I switched to writing in reStructuredText in mid-2009, and to writing in Vim in early 2010. Since then I’ve made a lot of tweaks to improve editing efficiency, and eventually collected these in a Vim plugin (and a Python script). The following discussion of that plugin might be of interest to anyone concerned with writing efficiency and/or editor customization.
[more...]

Permalink     1 Comment     [, , , , , , , , , ]    

“The Unquenchable Torch of Kelera”

23:49 30 Sep 2012. Updated: 00:53 01 Oct 2012

This longsword is the same blade referred to in older Issilanth texts as “The Firedemon’s Tooth”, as can be seen by comparing descriptions from historical sources.

This is a description from private letters during its possession by the Kelera family:

My visit to Yeemn’s chambers did not go as well; his response to the absence of my maid was to play a trick upon me wherein he took his family’s sword (a prized possession, apparently) directly from the fire, where it had been since before my entrance, and against my will pressed it to my fist—there is no injury, for the sword was somehow cool to the touch. He laughed and told me that it “likes the fire”, and that its sheen was whiter than that of a normal sword, and showed me the glow from letters near the hilt. I could not make them out, but thought they spelled a name beginning with “W”. I did not care for his trick, which frightened me badly and made it ever clearer that unlike his brother Yeemn remains a boy, but conceded that the blade was an excellent one and remarkably sharp—particularly if it was, as he claimed, hundreds of years old.

—Private letters of Seev Denina, 1082 IY.

[more...]

Permalink     Comment     [, , , , , , ]    

Q’Rith Season Two

23:05 23 Sep 2012. Updated: 20:37 07 Apr 2013

I recently finished the second season of my D&D campaign, and want to review the season just as I did with the first one.
[more...]

Permalink     2 Comments     [, , , , ]