I went to a local coffee shop and a talkative man behind the counter asked what I do for work. I told him I’m currently writing three books on computer programming, one young adult novel, and a mindfulness app for iOS and Android, in addition to running this website. When you say it out loud it sounds a little crazy, but in the midst of it it’s not a problem, I like bouncing between the projects.
Scala, Java, Unix, MacOS tutorials (page 88)
“When there is no attachment to the past and no expectation of the future, there is only this moment — the eternal present, here and now.”
~ Ram Dass, in one of his best books, be love now
I did something wrong in a previous blog entry that led me to use the pax command to create a large backup/archive. There’s nothing wrong with using pax — other than the fact that it’s not available for Cygwin — and I really needed to created a huge archive.
What wasn’t working
In my earlier blog post I stated that something like this did not work for me when trying to create a large backup using find, xargs, and tar:
find . -type f -name "*.java" | xargs tar cvf myfile.tar
What was happening was that as xargs was managing the input to the tar command, tar kept re-writing the archive. That is, each time xargs passed a new block of input files to tar, tar perceived it as a new command, and went on to re-create the file named myfile.tar. So, instead of the huge myfile.tar that I expected, I ended up with only a few files in the archive.
Happy Halloween, 2019, from some folks at Texas A&M University (one of four colleges I spent time at).
(Image from this TAMU LinkedIn page.)
I’ve known about Ram Dass and his books for a long time, but I don’t think I considered his work too much until I stumbled across the book, Polishing The Mirror, which I now consider to be the best spiritual book I’ve ever read. More recently I started reading his newer book, Walking Each Other Home, and the following quote comes from that book.
~~~
There is no inherent self — we are boundless. The ego is a structure of mind that organizes the universe, particularly around the relationship to separateness. It is the steering mechanism for you as a separate entity surviving and functioning within this world, on this plane.
“The ego is frightened of death, because ego is part of the incarnation and ends with it. For the soul, death is just another moment.”
~ Ram Dass, be love now
October 29, 2019: We already have a few inches of snow on the ground, and reports call for another five inches today, with temps in the teens.
One year for Christmas I got a bunch of cookies and a car charger for my phone. It was a good Christmas. :)
When I started working with Flutter a couple of months ago to develop iOS and Android apps from one code base, I started keeping notes about how to do things with Flutter and Dart (the programming language behind Flutter). These notes became my own personal cheatsheet, and then those notes just kept getting larger, and larger.
From there, I started to create a book I titled “Flutter Quick Reference” based on those notes. Right now this “book” is really just a very large Flutter/Dart cheatsheet, but because some of the content in it can’t be found elsewhere on the internet, I thought I’d share it here. Also, because I don’t know if I’ll ever take the time to finish making this into a real book, I made this first release free.
The thing I don’t understand about modern-day republicans is that back in the day they were known as being fiscally conservative, but these days, especially with Trump and McConnell in control, they are racking up insane levels of debt.
I can seeing racking up debt during a time when the economy is down, but racking up debt when unemployment is at all-time lows is like creating enormous credit card debt while you have a huge income, i.e., you create credit card debt that exceeds your income, no matter how high your income is. It makes no sense, and it puts a horrible burden on the future United States economy.
For more information, see this Washington Post story.
I was going to write more about this, but instead I’ll just share this link to RamDass.org related to a soldier asking him, “What are you, some kind of yogurt?”
My main project right now (through Valley Programming of Broomfield, Colorado) is porting my Back To Now mindfulness reminder app (formerly named Just Be) to run on both Android and iOS. It’s great to have a toolkit where I can write an app for Android and iOS using one set of code.
Here’s a nice little story about the Permafrost Tunnel in Fairbanks, Alaska (and global warming, and a house sinking).
My free Back To Now app is now available for iOS and Android devices. For more details, see our blog post on the Valley Programming website.
“Train people well enough so they can leave; treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”
~ Richard Branson
ADN.com has this nice list of things to do in Anchorage, Alaska on New Year’s Eve.
Back on December 31, 2010, I was trying to make my way to Seward, Alaska, but had a problem with icy roads, and couldn’t find chains to fit my tires, so after a few hours I finally gave up on the trek and stopped in a hotel in Anchorage. They started the fireworks at 5 or 6pm (because of the whole darkness thing), and various shows went on all night, which was pretty cool. Happy New Year’s Eve!
I worked on some tools and processes today, so sometime soon we should have PDF, EPUB, and MOBI versions of “Scala Book” available.
Update, April, 2020: Here’s a link to all of the free versions of “Scala Book.”
Amelia: How do you feel about me now?
Nick: I fell in love with you the first time I saw you — that’s crazy. I didn’t even know you, it was just this idea of you. And then ... it just wasn’t what I thought.
[Then he says something about the way she kisses, and she slaps him.]
Amelia: Hey. I’m not an idea of a person. I’m an actual person.
[She walks away.]
~ from New Girl
When watching the Limitless tv series, I always wondered what the CJC was. I knew it’s supposed to be some sort of FBI office in New York, but I thought they never explained what “CJC” stands for. Then today, when I had the fourth episode playing while I was doing dishes, I saw that CJC stands for Cross Jurisdictional Command, as shown in this image.
Update: After some more googling, I’ve read that the CJC is a fictional office, meaning that there really is no such thing as a CJC office in New York city. So, that case is solved. :)
(In slightly-related news, Limitless is also one of my favorite tv series that lasted only one season.)
