1. Wrote and passed my proposal exam.
2. Wrote and submitted a conference paper.
3. Applied for and received grant money to attend two conferences.
4. Applied for and received grant money to spend eight weeks in a European research lab.
5. Applied for and received an internship at a blue-chip technology company.

On top of all this my research is humming along at a very promising clip. I have almost enough material for another paper and I’m on schedule to complete my dissertation next year. I’m even starting to think about post-graduate life in real and concrete terms.

I’ll be travel blogging during my trip to Europe this summer and I may write about some of the research I come across at the conferences I am attending. After that I’ll go on a long hiatus, because working in industry is not really compatible with maintaining this particular kind of public online identity. That and I’ll be very busy.

[Twitter, on the other hand, is perfect.]

So I guess stop by for the microblogging, but don’t expect much else for the moment.

Using ssh to login to the server hosting this page, I was able to run a few uptime commands. The results weren’t pretty:

[stober@p3nlh133 ~]$ uptime
 07:37:58 up 3 days, 19:27,  2 users,  load average: 24.12, 10.95, 8.83

On the technical front, I’m now an iPod Touch owner, I recently upgraded my work computer to 64-bit Ubuntu, and I bought a new router. The iPod touch has been heavily reviewed elsewhere, the 64-bit Ubuntu upgrade was surprisingly uneventful, and the router just works (probably because it was not made by D-Link).

So that leaves Thailand pictures, which I’ll go ahead and outsource to someone who has both a better camera and a better eye than I do. Check it out.

1. Use the Firebug Firefox extension.
2. Look for the largest containing box with the issue.
3. Modify IDs not Classes.
4. Sometimes the obvious keyword is not the right keyword (e.g. max-width versus width).
5. Change one thing at a time.
6. Be sure to remember how to reverse any change.
7. Ditch old IE workarounds on principle.

Sigh.

The best part, however, are the little user widgets embedded in the theme. Try clicking the little icons in the top right corner of each post or clicking on sidebar headings. Enjoy!

As I’ve grown older I’ve certainly dropped a lot of hobbies and have been slow in collecting new ones. My interests, perhaps naturally, have narrowed. I have a singular professional goal and a small number of things that I do for fun. However, working to become an expert at a small number of important things is a skill that, how should I say this … I am still trying to develop. I don’t think this is a product of my upbringing, at least not in any superficial sense.

One of the things I, sort of perversely and (a little) narcissistically, continue to do for fun is write blog entries on the web for the benefit of spam bots and perhaps a handful of friends and family. Part of the problem with my blogging is that my entries span a wide gamut from obscure non-general-audience computer science stuff to food/photo blogging for everyone. In between you’ll find the odd book related entry and many entries on politics.

Well-rounded blogs are not as desirable as well-rounded children.

So as an effort to practice trying to sustain a narrow focus, I’m going to cut it out with one category of entries — the entries on politics. This has numerous benefits beyond just improving my own ability to focus. For one, whenever I look back at some politically themed entry I wrote in the past, I feel a small amount of shame. They just aren’t really that good. If I have a point, it’s usually something that seems clever until I come back to it a week later.

[Aside: I'm beginning to believe that part of the problem with political discourse in this country is that there is entirely too much of it. I'm sure that some of my political beliefs are not really the product of rigorous reasoning and more the result of simple repetition.]

Another reason is that there are plenty of good political blogs out there, most attached to money making outfits with some caché and bullpens full of professional supporting staff (or so I imagine). This isn’t really the same wild west environment that prevailed when I started putting words online circa 2000 or so. The wheat has already been separated from the chaff. I know which category I fall into.

So from now on I’ll relegate my left-leaning political sensibilities to shares in the sidebar and the odd Quote of the Day/Twitter. I expect the book/food/photo/CS blogging to continue.