Older blog entries for ralsina (starting at number 647)

Fear of Being Discovered

It doesn't matter what I am doing, be it work, a hobby, or just talking, I have a constant fear, in the background processes of my mind, that I will be discovered, that I will be found to be a hack, a fraud, a conman.

It doesn't matter if I am actually a hack at what I am doing at the time, or if it's something I am really good at, or if it's something that's impossible to be a fraud at. That little voice of insecurity is there, all the time, saying "they'll figure you out, they'll know, they'll realize you are full of crap".

I know, rationally, that I don't really suck at most of the things I do, and those I suck at, I could do better, because I also have this other irrational voice telling me I can do pretty much everything. I wonder if those voices are the same thing, or if they are like the devil and angel in my shoulders.

Being an introvert means I don't want to be shown as a hack, so I try to do things well, so I am not really a hack, so I am not shown as a hack. If I am consistently not a hack, I get insanely confident that I can do stuff I really can't do, because I am a hack at those.

I speak in conferences, which for an introvert is difficult, but since I don't want to be a hack, I try to figure out how to do it, and it seems I am not bad at it, but before I do it, every time, I feel like a hack, I know I should have done my slides earlier, I should have rehearsed, I should know what I am going to say, and I didn't, couldn't, don't.

Whenever I have a problem and google and see my own earlier fumblings appear as results, I wonder if that's actually the level of knowledge out there, if everyone else is as much of a hack as I am, and I despair. Then I try to figure things out and do it better, and probably stop being a hack for a little bit.

I am an engine fueled by insecurity and neurosis. It's exhausting. It's a lot of fun.

Syndicated 2012-12-05 18:48:07 from Lateral Opinion

New rst2pdf feature: --strip-elements-with-class

First new feature in rst2pdf in a long long time, but it was easy to do, and there was an actual user needing it.

This exposes functionality rst2html already had, so that's probably why it was easy to do ;-)

In any case, what is it and what is it good for?

If you mark something with a class, you can now omit it from the output:

.. class:: ignored

This will not be in the output if you use --strip-elements-with-class=ignored

And it's useful, for example, so you can keep slides and presentation notes in the same file. You just put your notes in a class you strip when producing the slides.

Since some classes are automatically assigned for admonitions, this is extra simple:

.. note:: This is a note admonition.

   Note admonitions always have the note class. So you can strip them easily.

And if you don't strip them, they will look pretty.

Syndicated 2012-12-04 22:21:00 from Lateral Opinion

Next Time You See a Movie, Remember This

Last night they were playing "X-Men: First class" on TV, and I once again saw this:

http://i827.photobucket.com/albums/zz191/charter28/MontaasnevadasenVillaGesellsegunlaltimapelideX-Men.jpg

Villa Gesell según Hollywood.

And of course, there are a few details wrong with that picture: