On the Importance of Taking Vacations
January 23, 2010 @ 1:42 am
Four months ago I returned from vacation. It was unlike any vacation I had ever taken before—in that, the principle objective was to simply relax. This may sound obvious, but most vacations I have taken have actually involved very little relaxing. Most days I sat on the beach reading books next to my wife instead of hustling around an over-populated city seeking thrills and art from the ages. That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy those types of holidays, because I do, but after a year of long work weeks I needed something different. I needed to slow down.
And this got me thinking, maybe people don’t vacation enough. I’m not talking about those people that work 80+ hours a week trying to build a company or get ahead in their career and won’t ever take the time to take a vacation. Although, I am sure many of them could use a vacation, I think the people that need it the most are the nine-to-fivers that suffer through work days that resemble Groundhog Day.
I can’t help but think we would have lower rates of social dysfunction if people took more vacations. It seems that instead of absorbing the experiences this world has to offer, we delve into accumulating material possessions that do little to further our character and circumstance. We compete with our peers to amass things that act as a translucent facade around our characterless selves. Perhaps if our competition was more experience based, we’d have less social disease and war.
Another Revival
October 18, 2009 @ 9:02 am
Although this website has been around since 2004, I started blogging, at least in some form, in early 2001. While much of what I have written has been lost (or is not appropriate for this space) I hope to publish some of my past writings here.
This site has been through too many incarnations, and my hope is to develop some sort of normalcy here. Massplastic.com has served mostly as my blog, but at various times it has also served as a portfolio, personal profile, and company homepage.
The new layout is purposefully facile so I can attempt to focus on content creation rather than design. I have had a lot on my mind lately; things that I wish to write about. I have been compiling ideas and over the next few months I might get around to publishing one or two of them.
Software I Buy
December 29, 2008 @ 7:36 am
Whenever possible I prefer to use open source software, but I don’t mind paying for software, either. Inspired by Alex Payne’s recent post, I’ve compiled a list of software I’ve bought over the years:
TextMate–By far the most used application I have ever owned. As a developer I spend countless hours inside text files, and TextMate helps make working with these files more pleasureable. It can extend to do pretty much whatever you want in that elegant sort of way. $55 for an application that I cannot live without seems like a steal. Absolutely no regrets.
Transmit–I don’t know anyone that uses plain old FTP much anymore, but Transmit is much more than just an FTP client. It has Amazon S3 integeration, which is a lifesaver for me, and works with other file transfer protocols (e.g. SFTP, WebDAV, etc.). I like Transmit over Cyberduck because of its S3 support and the elegance of its UI.
Things–Another life saving application. Between my personal and work life I have way too much going on to keep it stored in my brain. Things helps me organize tasks in a very GTD way, and helps me be a more efficient and effective person. The desktop version is free (for now), but the iPhone application is worth the $9.99. Although, I wish the iPhone version would sync over the cable or bluetooth.
Passenger/Ruby Enterprise Edition–Although these are technically free, I felt compelled to donate money because they are the lifeblood of many of my web applications. Even though Ruby isn’t always my language of choice, I wanted to do what I could to encourage further development.
Versions–A great Subversion UI for the Mac. Makes handling multiple SVN projects a breeze. Even though I use Git for version control these days, I still have a lot of projects on Subversion. As a terminal guy, it took me awhile for Versions to sell me on its utility, but now I can’t wait for a Git version.
Frenzic–An iPhone app by the folks at the IconFactory. A simple, addicting puzzle game that will help pass the time in those annoying queues.
GuitarToolkit–A Deck Ad sold this to me (I still can’t believe it). I play a little guitar and having a tuner and chord library in my pocket at all times is ultra-handy.
Decibel–A decibel meter for the iPhone. I’ve been to a lot of loud shows and consequently have some occational ringing in my ears. Having this handy utility helps me know what kind of noise my ears are being exposed to.
NewsFire–I have major regret that I bought this application. It did serve a purpose for a few months, but with NetNewsWire and Google Reader being free (better) alternatives I would not buy this again.
DropMessenger
June 8, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
When I was in college, I was always struggling to get the class I wanted, at the times I wanted, with the teachers I wanted. I solved a lot of that problem by building a little script for my personal use that would text-message me letting me know someone had dropped a course that was full and I was trying to add.
Anyway, it took me awhile to get the time, but I finally rolled it into a website that I hope other students find useful.
I’m calling it DropMessenger.
Update: DropMessenger is no longer active. While it was a useful tool, I didn’t have the time to maintain the parsing library adequately. Essentially, colleges would update their class schedule pages and I would have to rework how the pages were parsed to extract the data.
MySQL Prediction
January 23, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Even as ubiquitious as it is, and as much as I love/use MySQL, I believe its best days are behind it. It has always struggled to maintain a foothold in the enterprise and with people rethinking relational data these days it could very well be on its way out. I don’t think we’ll see this any time soon. Sun’s purchase of MySQL is interesting. They are clearly an enterprise solutions provider and will, no doubt, push MySQL further in that direction. It cannot continue to thrive in the small user space because, as the web gets more and more agile from the developer’s perspective, users are looking for more concise and reduced means of storing their data.
Update: I wrote this nearly two years ago, and I feel this is even more relevant with the recent acquision by Oracle. It is still anyone’s guess what Oracle will do with MySQL. I wouldn’t put too much money behind Oracle bolstering the MySQL codebase with new features and innovations.