August 2006 Archives

Life From 30,000 Feet

August 27, 2006

Breathing, eating, sleeping. Typing, gardening, speaking. These things Evolution's end — but not my own. Life begets life, begets continuous wonder and love. Ambition brings no love, births no wonder nor praise for the Universe. Life must be praise, not ambition. Must be love, must be passion mixed with sense mixed with openness. Open to the Mysteries, open to the wide skies above the plain and deep places hidden inthe gorge. Open to the divine. Praise be to Thee, O Universe of limitless perfection. Grant that I may Live for Thee.

Google Analytics

August 17, 2006

Data have been pressing on my mind quite a bit lately (yes, "have" not "has"), as I have become immersed in data at work for much of this year. I recently had a dream in which I saw my garage in smithereens on the ground and remarked, "that will take a lot of SQL statements to rebuild." (SQL is the language used to write database code). But a more fun example of data obsession is looking at the map produced by Google Analytics.

googlemap.gif

Google Analytics is a new service that web masters can install on their website to get advanced tracking and data about the use of their sites. The data has always been there, but Google has made it extremely easy to use and see. I installed this software just last week, and have been simply amazed at their map of the cities in which my site is being visited. The most amazing part is this: Karachi, Pakistan, has been home to more viewers than any other city in the world. In the past week, you can also see visitors from all over Europe; from Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates; from China, Japan, Phillipines, and Singapore; from Australia and New Zealand; from Chile, Argentina, and Mexico; and of course the U.S. and Canada. I'm a little surprised there's no one from Africa. Click on the image above to open a larger version.

Stress Leads to Web Design?

August 9, 2006

My old friends overwork and stress have been shining brightly of late. What might seem an irony to some is that one way I've been dealing with it over the past week has been re-designing my website. You'd think that's what I was doing all day as Lead Software Developer and thus wouldn't want to see at the end of the day. With that assumption you'd be wrong.

I have done essentially zero web site development at work over the past six months. I have been busy instead with "leading" the software development team (which means a bit of mentoring, bouncing ideas, application requirements & design, project planning, etc.), split less than evenly with MS SQL DBA work. So doing something fun — redesigning my site — is in fact relaxing and stimulating. So stop by the site, come back here, and let me know what you think. In particular, go visit Evolution under Web Design. Fun times, especially for TAMSter readers who might recognize a few things from the early days =).

Passages on Peace from Different Religions

August 4, 2006

"I charge you all that each one of you concentrate all the thoughts of your heart on love and unity. When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness." Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 29,

Whilst looking for the exact words of this quote I came across a lovely page of quotes on peace from all different religions. The page is called Peace Seeds. "[The] site is dedicated to the concept that when one studies different religious traditions, one is struck by the repeated similarities of basic truths." There is no information on who runs the site. There are a number of other categories in which they've gathered like-minded passages from various faiths.

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