April 06, 2004
ten years after nirvana
April 5, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found after having shot himself in the head. I thought I might take a minute to reflect on the evolution of my interest in music, paying special attention to the role that Nirvana played for me at the time.
Continue reading "ten years after nirvana"April 05, 2004
posting papers in the blog
Now that I've got LaTeX2HTML working well, it is a pretty trivial matter to take my papers and put them in the blog. So, a few questions for the readers: a) would it be good for me to post papers in the blog so one can make comments on them using the blog comments system? b) would it be good to do for old papers, or just from now on?
marx's theses on feuerbach
(A summary done for my class on cultural psych, cultural-historical activity theory, and DCog. Also available in the articles section.)
Marx's ``Theses on Feuerbach'' is an attack on the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, and more generally on materialist philosophy prior to Marx. Much of Marx's work up until the theses had been a sustained criticism of Hegelian idealism, often much in line with Feuerbach's own criticism. In this work, as well as in The German Ideology and other works written during and after 1845, Marx turns on Feuerbach and the other materialists for not having gone far enough from the currents of German philosophical thought. Feuerbach, Marx writes, has moved from ``abstract thinking'' to ``sensuous contemplation'' (§5), but this move, for Marx, is not far enough. Marx wants to move from the activity of philosophers, theoretical interpretation of the world (§11), which is the activity of both Hegel and Feuerbach, to ``revolutionary'' or ``practical-critical'' activity (§1).
Continue reading "marx's theses on feuerbach"April 02, 2004
diet report
So I've been on a diet since the beginning of the year, as my new year's resolution. I've been following something akin to The Hacker's Diet, modified to suit my own particular lifestyle. Props to Bryan for pointing that one out to me, I don't think I could have come as far as I have without the methods for statistically tracking progress and paying attention to what I eat. Here's the results so far this year:
April 01, 2004
mp3 players
I'm in the market for an mp3 player. I crave gigs of music at my fingertips. Now, the default choice in this day and age is the iPod. However, I don't have firewire on my windows box, so I would have to get the USB version. Furthermore, they are expensive. The mini-iPod I regard as a poor storage-to-price ratio. I'm not too concerned with size, as I currently use a CD player and I carry around a man-purse everywhere I go.
My ideal player would be anything smaller than the CD player, preferably but not necessarily fitting in a pants or shirt pocket. It would have an excellent storage-to-price ratio, a shuffle function that didn't suck, a passable menu system, and the ability to do playlists.
Any suggestions?
March 29, 2004
tricksy studentses
I haven't had to TA this year, unlike the last two years, but I remember it well enough to think this is hilarious (via Belle), and I'm sure the rest of you who are TAing or teaching right now will be amused.
March 28, 2004
table ruler
A List Apart, a great little web design 'zine, has an article on a neat little Javascript effect - a table ruler. If you have to present a lot of tabular data on a webpage, you might check out this technique.