I feel like I've been so busy lately it's difficult to
track the days. The past two weeks, when it was friday I
wondered how the week had passed by so quickly. But still,
I guess some stuff must have happened since my last diary
entry from the 10th. So, let's go through it little by
little, as I remember it.
There was election in Denmark, and a new government got
elected. I don't know how that will affect the daily life,
but I guess it will probably be 95% same-ol-same-ol, which
is fine.
I haven't had much time to read lately, but this saturday I
bought two books; a Kurt Cobain biography, and a book
modestly entitled "Civilizations". I've read the Cobain
biography, which was kinda interesting. I've always been a
fan of Nirvanas music, and it's impossible to avoid
becoming fascinated by Cobains short, tragic and eventful
life story. I didn't know a lot about Cobain before reading
the book, but now at least I have some understanding of
what his music was about, and what made life so hard for
him. I still think of Nirvanas unplugged show in mtv, as
mtv's finest hour. Reading about the circumstances of the
show, didn't make it less interesting. The book made me
think of a lot of things, among the more superficial, how
eventless the music scene has become, and how 90% of all
popular bands are totally worthless and uninteresting. sigh.
I'm going to read the "Civilizations" book soon (kind of a
gamble book-wise), but first I'm reading a book
called "Flashman and the Dragon", a book recommended to me
by a friend.
I have been working a lot on packaging at work lately,
trying to make the search engine more of a packaged
product. It's one thing to write a piece of software that
performs a given task, but it's quite another to create
logical product boundaries, and decide what features
arguably belong in the product, and which ones don't. Then
there is pricing policies, license policies, extra features
policies, support policies, maintainance policies, customer
support, product tailoring and more. Thankfully I only have
a small part of that responsibility, but it makes you think
about how a better focus on the big picture of product
development would have avoided many problems. On the other
hand, theres the problem of evaluating which problems could
have been avoided by better planning, and which problems
would have surfaced no matter what. After all, it's
impossible to plan every stumbling block in advance.
I've decided to be more active in my studies next semester.
The last year, I've used too much time working, and too
little time studying. In fact, I haven't had a single
course this entire year, but now I've reached a point where
I'm beginning to actually feel inspired for some more
studies. There was a reason for not studying the last year,
I've not really been in the mood for written projects or
courses or exams or stuff like that. I hope that has
changed now.
Advogato as a community is a funny animal. Unlike most
other communities which are by nature focused on
discussions and direct interchange between participants,
Advogato is most of all (in my mind) a forum where people
publish their immediate thoughts and diary entries, with no
particular audience in mind. Of course the other readers of
advogato is the audience, but the connection is very
indirect. The diary entries are like a continuous stream of
consciousness which is fed into the community as a
testimony of the daily lives of other in the community.
Most readers of a given diary entry does not know the
person writing the entry, but still people recognize user
names from previous entries, and gradually get an
impression of that person. Of course it's impossible to
follow all "threads" of diary entries, so instead you
naturally "pick up" a couple of people (who you don't know)
and follow their diaries. I don't why, and I don't know if
it's only me (which I doubt). I guess its both natural
curiosity, and at the same time the desire to assert that
ones everyday feelings are shared by others in
this "community". At times I fear that advogato attracts
narcissists. At times I fear that I am a narcissist, in a
culture of self-love gone wrong. Or maybe I've rust read
too much Cobain biography in the weekend :)