A whole jumble of random thoughts in here this time, with little relation to the title.
I've decided I really like the Bay Area radio station KFOG. They play new music, but they also play music going all the way back to the 60s, too. Importantly, they're not owned by Infinity or Clear Channel. Today they're doing a marathon of everything the Beatles released, in alphabetical order. Right now "Lovely Rita" is playing. I still wish that I could listen to Michigan State University's 89 FM "The Impact", a remarkably cool station, but I'm not willing to install a proprietary streaming client, so I'll stick to over-to-air broadcasts.
I've been working on GNU libavl. I'm hoping to get out a new release with all 12 of the main content chapters finished by the 7th, the day that the Stanford winter quarter starts. Then I want to write a chapter on performance and optimization, because in my research I think I've learned some things that are worth saying.
I've also been reading a lot lately. In the last month, I've read, in no particular order, Timequake and Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut, True Names and the opening of the cyberspace frontier by Vernor Vinge, Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card, No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain, The C++ Programming Language (special edition) by Bjarne Stroustrup, and Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL by Scott Meyers. I'm currently in the middle of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan and The C++ Standard Library by Nicolai Josuttis. I'm a big fan of both Vonnegut and Twain, in case you couldn't tell.
I turned over the first day of this year's Far Side calendar today! It's too bad that this is going to be the last year...
No one voted in the poll in my last diary, except me. Shame on you. Don't you guys like Las Vegas?
I think I'm looking for a new sport to get excited about (participating in, not watching). I'm disappointed by the fencing here at Stanford. I mean, their varsity are really good, and they've got some really good fencers in the club, too, but it's not an atmosphere that makes me feel very welcome. If I had a good opportunity to learn and improve, I could deal with that, but there's not really much along those lines either, unless your pockets are full of money at least. The club coach charges $20 per person for a one-hour group lesson. I haven't asked, but I'm sure that at that rate I can't afford individual lessons.
I am making bean soup for dinner out of a box labeled ``Not for Passover use.'' I hope it's not Passover now, then. I wouldn't want to get in trouble with the manufacturer.
Went to see LotR: FotR a few days ago at the considerable trouble of biking 35 minutes each way in the rain and (on the way back) in the dark. It was worth it though. The only bit that really bothered me was the statement (implication?) at the beginning that Gollum started out as a nasty, despicable creature. As I recall from the book, he was actually an ordinary hobbit when he was young, then he found the One Ring on his birthday (or stole it from a friend who found it?). Anyway, a good movie.