I haven’t updated my blog in a while so I decided to pick a different theme. My current activities are mostly related to work. I did put together a new bike and plan to do some riding on the weekends. Going to try to get in shape enough to start riding it to work. I’m learning new Web developer technologies because that is my primary gig at work these days. Right now I’m working with Perl 5, HTML, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.
Quick reaction, more later.
For all the results up and down the ticket, the overwhelming importance of re-electing Barack Obama, with potentially 2 or more Supreme Court appointments imminent, is the most important result with multi-generational ramifications.
Obama was the only the candidate with a slim chance of helping us head off catastrophe. The operative anecdote comes from Franklin D. Roosevelt's remarks to supporters 80 years ago, when they outlined a progressive agenda - "I agree with you.
As Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast last week, meteorologists and climate scientists were repeatedly asked to explain what role climate change played in amplifying the storm.
We did our best to answer: We know that a warming climate puts more energy into storms, including hurricanes, loading them with more rainfall and the stronger winds pushing more of a storm surge.
I’m going to take a break from all the climate change stuff for a while and focus more my career as a software engineer. My hope is that I can soon start making a bigger difference in the world by bettering myself so that I will have the means to help others in the near future.
So here is my initial plan. I’m going to go back over my computer science training from the start and fill any any missing gaps. MIT and UCBerkley both have their lectures online. I’m also going to take a look at the math lectures and lectures from other engineering disciplines.
For programming, I think I will focus on Java 6 and the J2EE libraries since that seem to the most widely used in the industry these days. I want to be able to ace any technical interview questions right off the bat.
For a little history, I first starting programming in high school on an Apple IIe with Apple Basic. I started college initially as an Electronic Engineering student, then decided to switch to Information Technology. I had learned that really liked programming. I quickly picked up Pascal, COBOL and C++. They didn’t teach Java in my college back then, I would have to pick that up on my own several years later. I find it very easy to work with and performance isn’t as big an issue now that we have quad-cores and basically unlimited system resources. Not that I don’t optimize for performance. I do. It’s especially essential when you are doing embedded programming or supporting a lot of processes at once. The great thing about Java is the portability. With C++ you have to do a lot of #ifdefs to support multiple platforms. With Java you code for the VM and the VM is complied for each platform. So basically, the same code runs on Windows, Solaris, Macs, etc.
In this moving video, Garth Lenz explains the environmental dangers of extracting oil from the tar sands. This is also related to the Keystone XL Pipeline. Republicans (and some Democrats) in congress still seek to get this pipeline deal approved. Saying yes to the pipeline is like saying yes to the most destructive and dangerous source of oil in North America.
Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.
She confessed that she was now "scared to death" by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.
Hello and Welcome,
I just registered this blog name and haven’t decided what I’ll be posting about yet.
This is a personal blog and Guy LaCrosse is my real name.
I mainly follow blogs dealing with the environment, politics, religion, science, technology and programming.
Feel free to leave a comment if you like.
