Recently I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading and it’s been a great refresher, for both getting me thinking about random ideas and exploring some new areas. It has also certainly helped changed my perspective toward college, in regards to just wanting to learn for the sake of learning.
Knowledge and time are two things are finite. Everyone has the same amount of time in a day to learn and nearly everyone can learn the same basic knowledge now, thanks to the Internet. However, not everyone spends the same amount of effort learning. After overloading myself with some really good books, I just started to notice how much more insightful I was becoming and how useful those books were for shaping my ideas. I think reading is something that more people should practice on a daily basis. Becoming lazy and unmotivated is terrible in the long run and such a waste, when your time here is limited.
Something else that I began to notice while reading these good books was the simple joy that I was getting just from learning about a topic in an organized and thought-out manner. I think this is something key that I have begun to use at school, to appreciate things more. I’ve been taking a class recently that is a general computer class, covering almost every function of a computer and how it all works. I wasn’t exactly happy at first because I thought the class would be more focused on one area in specific, but afterwhile, I became quite satisfied with the depth of the knowledge and the manner in which it was presented. My teacher was quite good at what he does and the slides and book combined are great resources. After getting over my initial disappointment, I really just began to appreciate the class for the knowledge that I was learning. It’s great to be able to just appreciate knowledge for the sake of knowledge and get something out of that. This is definitely a lifelong philosophy that I will try to improve.
I sit here tonight with a glass of wine, watching a wonderful movie called “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” It was released in 1980 but I’m still salvaging something of value from it.
It follows the story of a simple tribe of hunter gatherers in Africa, a group of people who take life for what it is, living in the harsh desert and enjoying life. There is no hate, no greed, no possession, just life and survival. It’s something that I wish I could enjoy. The movie then contrasts modern day life, with how modern man adapts his environment to suit him. Modern man must spend 18 years in school learning to adapt to his environment and as someone in school, learning to adapt currently, I found this quite amusing. Why do we spent almost a quarter of our lives to learning how to live, how to adapt, rather than just enjoying what we have. I’m torn sometimes between continuing my education and stable environment versus moving to Canada and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. I think it’s smart to always challenge what you hold dear and this was simple movie provides another interesting example of doing so.
As an addendum to Shared Hosting Sucks, I’d like to share what my research found and where my new future host will be:
Slicehost.com is a small hosting company located in St. Louis that fits my needs perfectly. $20 a month gets you 256mb ram, 10gb storage, and 100gb bandwidth! Once you pay, you have a choice of several different Linux distributions, of which I chose Debian. It builds the image for you and then within 15 minutes you have a fully functioning server with an IP address and full root access. They have an extremely slick Rails management backend featuring all the important stats about your server, an AJAX command prompt tied to the hardware, rebooting and shutdown buttons, and a great wiki/tutorial section to get you started on securing your server. it’s all very clean and exactly what I need.
One of the other awesome thing is the option to rebuild or switch your distro, not that you would probably use this frequently. Say you get tied of Debian and want to install Ubunto. 2 clicks and it will delete your current image and install Ubunto. So simple!
This really is a great solution for a good price. I can’t to switch, once my current shared hosting contract runs out…
I’m a bit wired on coffee right now, but this is a rant that has been building for awhile. Shared hosting sucks. After years of experience with many different providers and situations, I’m fed up with it. The idea is great, a shared utilization of resources because usually one person on a server is not going to use 100% of the resources, but how the situation is with most providers is terrible. Recently, I’ve been coming around more and more to the idea of a VPS, a shared server setup, but not sharing just one system.
To rant specifically, I’m tired of dealing with other people. Most shared hosts have CPanel or some other web-based GUI management system that is usually not efficient enough for me. I am definitely an advanced or expert user. I need SSH and direct access on a server. When CPanel can’t solve things for me, I have to ask for someone else’s help to fix things, which can take hours or might not even resolve the situation. Relying on other people un-efficient, especially when I have no clue about how competent these people are. I prefer to learn and solve things myself.
With the big interest in VMWare recently and VPS software in general, more companies are offering VPS solutions at reasonable cost. The general limiting factor is RAM, due to the physical capacity of most 32-bit servers at 4GB, so you might only get a VPS with 128mb RAM. I find this actually more than reasonable for most website solutions running Apache and MySQL. If you need better performance, run a low memory webserver like nginx or lighttpd. It’s just so much easier to fix something that is broken yourself. From now on, VPS will be my first choice for running a webserver and I hope you do the same.
What Friday isn’t lazy anyways? This day, however, has been especially lazy. A nice relax and breather for the long weekend ahead of me filled with work, hopefully. I can schedule my time quite well, but actually staying focused and on task is sometimes the hardest part.
Cloverfield
I’m stealing this from someone but “it’s an interesting ride.” Very Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla. Overall, I enjoyed it, but it felt like it was lacking something in the end. Maybe I’ve been too entrenched following it and knew too much going into it, but the actual process of the going, watching the movie, and then coming out just felt lackluster to me. I would be interested in more, but I almost feel like what more that would come, would be a wrapping up of what was started. Oh well, go see it for sure.
Other than that, I’ve just spent the day watching TV and movies. I haven’t been drinking and am starting to get my focus now, moving from web project to web project, along with a bit of homework. While I definitely enjoy partying, I let it get out of control sometimes. I am very overtop and “big” person sometimes. I eat big, I drink big, and I party big. Sometimes I definitely feel that gets the best of me. When I look back, sometimes I do feel ashamed of how I have acted and what I’ve done, but I am glad that I notice my mistakes and strive to correct them. It’s been awhile since I’ve sat at home on a Friday night and just “worked” but I think its been sorely missed.
It’s been 2008 for a few days now, but I’ve been busy. In a look back through 2007, I was really really busy.
Last year this time, I was returning from Poland and heading to Austria for a week of snowboarding. I spent 3 more months in Germany, then returning to spend 6 months in NYC with an internship. I started Fall by returning to school in Rochester, NY and have been there since. I don’t think I can really match that amount of travel this year, but its nice to remember such a great year.
Looking forward to this year, I don’t know what’s in store. I’ve got another 3 months at school, before hopefully spending 6 months at another internship, and then back to school. I don’t think I can graduate in ‘08, but ‘09 is my main goal. No clue where I will travel. I think I will just enjoy what the year brings.
However, I gotta have some resolutions. I can improve myself now, so here goes.
- Be more independent. I’ve grown too attached to my friends, so much so that I hate doing things alone. I don’t need to attach myself to people.
- Call more people. I’ve also grown afraid of calling people via phone because making that personal connection is tough. I know I can do it, but I’ve been afraid. I need to make that effort and deal with it.
- Lose 20 pounds, as always. This winter has been tough, lots of eating. Time to run more and lift in the gym 2x a week.
- Stop my goddamn procrastinating. I’ve put off posting about this new year. I’ve put off stupid simple stuff because I have been weak minded. No longer can some stuff wait. I need to stop being goddamn lazy. No more.
Happy New Year!
Saw 2 movies over the last couple of days.
Sweeney Todd
Johnny Depp and that other crazy white chick. I didn’t know it was a musical going in, but I still enjoyed it. Very gruesome and weird.
Juno
Best movie I’ve seen all year! I’ve been waiting for months to watch this, the trailer for it was excellent. A character driven comedy/drama with excellent acting and screenplay. The human element in movies; sappy love plots; have been getting to me more and more and this is a great example. Lots of high school comedy realism and awkwardness that I totally relate to and some good questions about love. Definitely go see it ASAP!
It’s a typical Christmas post. Merry Christmas and whatnot. My heart just isn’t in it this year though due to a combination of factors. Whether my family situation or my personal situation, I’m not sure which, but I’m just not celebrating too much. No tree at home, no snow, no heart. The one redeeming element were the presents of course!
I was extremely happy about finding a local knitting shop called Knit One, which seems to have a great community attached to it. I purchased a book for my mom from there and got the shops card, hopefully I can get her out of the house and making some connections. I hope she follows up on it.
My main gift was a great cashmere scarf, I don’t think I can get enough cashmere. A few gift cards to B&N and iTunes also. I really don’t need much anymore, I’m trying to slim down my physical connections as much as I can due to all the moving. Simple is better now-a-days. Also had a nice honey ham dinner with some great wine. I can’t really ask for more. Hope your Christmas was just as good!
Again, a re-occurring theme in my life as I mature, I think about what makes me happy and what I want out of life. I’ve defined it before with money being the roots for happiness. That still stands, but I’m aiming deeper now, with what I want to do with my life. My happiness comes and goes, generally I’m positive overall, but what do I want to do? What makes me happy?
I was absorbed reading a short novel yesterday called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect about the technology singularity, an event when similiar to Skynet or something when humans build a computer smart enough to think for itself, improve itself, and the consequences as the computer takes over. As all technology improves exponentially, eventually we might reach that point very soon. A scary thought, but the main point I took away from that novel was what people did once the computer took over. Imagine that it could grant you any whim you pleased. No more food, no more need really, no worries, so what would you do? What would make you happy?
The interesting thing I took away was that people would still chat and interact. A person is unique and ultimate. We control things ultimately. When I loosely relate that to my life, I came up with traveling as being one of the most important things to me. Meeting new people, learning new things, experiencing as much as I can ultimately makes me happy. I need to travel more.
A friend of mine has created a blog for his dad as a christmas gift. If that isn’t a great gift, then I don’t know what is. If the though is what matters most, then this is definitely up there.
Now to keeping looking for gifts for my mom, someone I can barely relate to! This will be fun.
