You didn’t think I’d let the year roll to an end without posting some New Year’s resolutions, did you? First let me announce (in a soft and somewhat sheepish voice) that I’ve looked through my logs and discovered that I read 31 books in 2005. Not too bad — especially when you consider the people who don’t read a single book after high school — but then again, I’m aspiring to be a librarian. And I could have done so much better, too: I didn’t read a single book in January or February, then read one in March, one in April, two in March, zero in June, seven in July, six in August, three in September, four in October, one in November, and six in December.
So, with that in mind, next year I will read, read, and read some more. At least 70 books, let’s say. Preferably over 100 but we’ll see. :)
Get Beyond to a usable state, hopefully a 1.0 release.
Start exercising. Really. :)
Learn how to cook so I can move beyond scrambled eggs for breakfast and pasta for dinner every single day.
Spend a set amount of time writing each day, and not just freewriting or journal writing but actual pieces — “real” writing. :)
Read all the C.S. Lewis books I haven’t yet read.
Brush up on my Latin so I can take Latin 301 in the fall.
Update Blank Slate more regularly than once a year. :)
Visit Thailand this summer.
Reply to e-mails within a few days of receipt.
Continue to post in this blog every (or every other) day, and write better posts while I’m at it.
Start working at the BYU library, in preparation for grad school.
These aren’t in any particular order, by the way — just in the order they popped into my head (which I suppose gives somewhat of an indication as to how pressing they’ve been in my thoughts lately…maybe). I could go on for another forty or fifty items but twelve is a nice even number (it’s a pity I couldn’t keep it to ten, huh).
Anyway, I’ve spent the last hour or so reading through various and sundry blogs online, and I discovered two that I like a lot and will certainly be on my blogroll whenever I get it up. The first is So Many Books, and the second is Rhetorical Response. If only there were more blogs like these! I’d write descriptions but in all reality they can speak for themselves, better than I could do. Check them out!
It was a dark and stormy night. Wait, it’s not night yet. Nor is it particularly stormy, per se — it’s more drizzly than anything. Days like these are made for curling up on a comfy couch with a good book in front of a roasty fire. But this is BYU housing and I doubt a roasty fire would go over too well, especially since I don’t have a fireplace. :) I did enjoy the end of Till We Have Faces earlier today, as my reward for cleaning the apartment. (Side note: I didn’t actually need a reward — cleaning is a reward in and of itself, and I really do like it.) Part I was long and didn’t feel like vintage C.S. Lewis, and I was wondering what on earth was going on — was I missing something? — but then Part II began and it all clicked together. The final scene was wonderful. In retrospect, it would’ve been nice to know the story of Cupid and Psyche in advance, but on second thought it was rather a fun surprise to find out that the basic storyline is Greek. At any rate, I liked the ending and thought it was well worth the read. George MacDonald’s Phantastes is next on my reading list. I read it years ago but can’t remember much of what happened. It’s fitting to read next, considering that it pretty much changed C.S. Lewis’s life. Oh, I haven’t mentioned yet that I joined the C.S. Lewis Society (local BYU club) the other day. It looks like we’ll be reading The Great Divorce. More updates later.
I finally decided to go visit the used bookshop a few blocks away. I don’t know why it took me so long — months and months — but I’m glad I went. My wallet’s in turmoil, though. ;) It felt soooooooo good to wander among the tall stacks of books, with all sorts of tucked away corners formed from the seemingly thousands of bookshelves. If it had been a library, I would have curled up in one of the corners and read for an hour or two, but since it was a bookstore, I figured that probably would have weirded the proprietors out. My main concern right now, though, is to persuade myself to read books from the library first and then only buy the ones I really like. I ended up buying John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Silmarillion (I used to have both, but I gave my copies to my younger brothers), and Luther’s German translation of the Bible (in the old Gothic script). I’m definitely a sucker for books. :) (It’s a good thing I’m going to become a librarian and not a bookstore owner. If I ever tried to run my own bookstore, I doubt that I’d ever be able to part with any of the books. :))
I’ve decided to take a short break from Beyond so I can work on the layout for a friend’s book (Translating Scripture: The Thai Book of Mormon). I got most of the body layout done today (at least the first draft of it), and the rest won’t take too long. The only real time chompers will be the cover (the inspiration hasn’t arrived yet, but I trust it will come in time) and editing the text itself. I’m really pleased with the results of the layout so far. With the author’s permission, I’ll post the cover and a sample chapter when we’re all done with it.
I’ll be taking a short break from working on Beyond, because I’m designing a book for a friend. I don’t imagine it will take more than a few days, though — at least not the time-intensive part of it.
But concerning Beyond, part of me wants to try writing a smaller app first (iDiary, I’ve called it), to test the waters and get some experience coding in Objective-C with Cocoa. But part of me wants to jump right in with Beyond instead of “wasting time.” I’m still not sure which part will win. :) At any rate, from time to time I take a step back and say to myself, “What in the heck do you think you’re doing?!? You can’t really do this.” And then I look at a quote I put up on wall: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do” (Eleanor Roosevelt). And then it’s back to the battle, because I am going to do this, no matter how difficult it is or how many obstacles other are or how impossible it seems. You can call it my personal Everest if you like. :)
On my trip to Mexico (which I’ll write up and post soon), I soon found that I’d much rather take still photos than video. Video’s fun and dandy and all that, but editing it takes so much time which I don’t really have. On the other hand, editing photos is relatively quick. (Not to mention that my PowerBook only has so much disk space on it and videos are a lot bigger than photos.) So now I’ve got to decide whether I should sell my camcorder in order to get a camera. And then of course the question arises as to which kind of camera. Right now I’m thinking digital SLR (DSLR), and PriceGrabber.com has various cameras of that sort starting around $550 (including the nice-looking Olympus EVOLT E300 Digital SLR which has a decent 8 megapixels and sells at $548 from at least one of the dealers). I’ll have to study the field in more depth before I make any decisions, of course — perhaps SLR is overkill (but I doubt it).
Sorry for not posting in a while. I’ll post again later today with more details, but rest assured that work has not halted. :) I’m still in the design stage, but this week I plan to finalize the first designs and start running them by people for usability testing. I’m also sending back the non-disclosure agreement today for the PAF specs, so I should get that back in the near future. I think I’ll work on the website, too, since that’s kind of essential. :) Since I’ve never coded for Mac before, I’m going to write a small journaling program first, to get a feel for things. At the moment I’m reading through the OS X developer guidelines and the human interface guidelines. Lots of good stuff there.
One decision I need to make soon is how to store the data internally. Speed is essential, as is scalability (since there are people out there with well over 10,000 names in their file). Hmm…
Wasn’t quite satisfied with the old Beyond logo, so I spruced it up a bit, going for the Aqua look:
This time I was in bed, but the thought came to me that today is Christmas and so I really ought to be blogging about the “reason for the season”: Jesus Christ. Who is He? To me, He is my Captain, my Savior, my Leader, my Redeemer, my Friend, my Strength, my All. I really don’t know what I would do if there were no Christ. But there is a Christ, and He is Jesus, and He truly is the Son of God. I’ve never seen Him nor do I really expect to see Him till He comes again, but I know Him. How? By reading His words, in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon. Anyone who really reads the teachings of Jesus and applies them will find their life being changed for the better — and not just a mere shade or two, but a completely new kind of existence that they couldn’t even imagine before. It’s real. Can I explain it? Only parts, but that’s okay, because I trust Him. I know He is perfectly reliable, good, and worthy of my loyalty. No matter what happens to me in this life, I will not — I cannot — renounce my Savior and my King. I’ve often wondered what it’s like not to believe. I don’t really know, but it seems like it would be so empty, hollow, and false, like life was a big lie. What of love? What of friendship? What of kindness? These are what make life worth living, and these are what comes from Jesus Christ. Warmth, the feeling of being home, the love in a family. Courage to face any odds, and the conviction of knowing one’s cause is just and good and pure. I look at the skeptics and the atheists: their claims seem flat and utterly boring. No God? Have they ever loved someone? I can’t understand how someone who has loved someone (not lusted after them, mind you, but really loved them) can say that there’s nothing more to life than what we see on the surface.
Since my bedtime is past, let me close by echoing once again that He lives! Christ really is our Savior and our Deliverer, and He rose again on the third day. Someday — someday soon — He will come again, in clouds of glory. I stand here as a witness that He is real, and I will stand by this testimony through the end of the earth.
I was going to go to bed, but I couldn’t help myself. :) So, today in church I was thinking about Christ’s statement in John 15:13 — “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That got me thinking about how we say a martyr gives his life. On the other hand, a suicide takes his life. (If you’re picky about my pronoun usage and would prefer some monstrosity like he/she or worse, deal with it. :))
It’s pretty clear that giving one’s life is an admirable and noble thing, whereas taking one’s life is shameful and reproachable. What’s the difference? If you’re taking your life, who are you taking it from? Yourself? I suppose it depends on the definition of take — either it could mean it in the sense of stealing or removing to one’s own person, or it could mean it in the take/bring sense (bring it with you somewhere). Given the contrast with give one’s life, I suspect it’s the former, especially because we don’t say “take my life to…” as if there’s motion involved.
Here’s what I’m thinking. When you give your life, it’s always for someone or something else — either another human (saving their life, usually) or God (religious martyrs) or some ideological cause. When you take your life, however, you’re not doing it for anyone but yourself — you’re snatching your life away (from God? He has all power, of course, but a suicide disrupts His plan and thus you could call it stealing it from Him) and ending it for you. I guess that’s where the good/bad connotations come from — giving is good and kind and taking is bad and mean. Interesting.
I wasn’t planning on blogging today (mainly because of a splitting headache) but I guess I’d better write at least a little bit. Christmas was good, though I’ve found that in the last few years my interest in getting presents has almost completely evaporated. Not that I’m not pleased when I do get them, of course, but I wouldn’t be troubled in the least if I didn’t get a single present. Spent most of the latter evening getting caught up on e-mails (and I’m still not quite there). One of my presents today was a book, Richard Paul Evans’s The Christmas Box Miracle. I loved it! It’s his story of how he came to write The Christmas Box and everything that happened afterwards. (Side note: I discovered today that the presents I like most are books. Good thing I’m going to become a librarian, huh. :)) Well, this coming week I’ll be working 20-30 hours a week, writing Beyond, and getting ready for the new semester. But first I have to get some sleep so I can get rid of this dratted cold. Eating lots of peanut M&Ms today probably didn’t help much… (Second side note: I’m not a big candy fan, but M&Ms, particularly peanut and/or peanut butter, are almost irresistible. Ditto for Snickers.) Okay, it’s bedtime, buckeroo. Oh, one last thing: I finally switched to OS X’s Mail app today, after using Mutt (a command-line client) for I don’t know how many years. Why? Unicode, ease of use, searching, easy access to old folders, and a few other reasons. I’m happy and it’s working great for me so far. I think the new Mail in Tiger has a few cool new features I’d like even more, but I haven’t saved up enough money yet to upgrade. Maybe next month…
