27th January 2008, 02:04 pm
I find the affect of clutter to be cyclical. Sometimes, when I know what I need to get done and I can be fully absorbed in the task, it has no affect. Other times, when I don’t have a clear picture on what needs to be done, it really bothers me.
There are a ton of tasks to be done this time every year: taxes, new development projects, school activities, etc. All of them seem to slowly suck the life out of me. Oh, and don’t forget winter is starting to lose it’s grasp, so yard work is about to start calling too. It’s enough to make you want to crawl back in bed and pull the covers up.
I wonder if hibernation would get us out of doing taxes and bookwork?
On the bright side, today was the first day of the year that it’s nice enough to put the top down on the car and let the sunshine help drive the winter blues away. Maybe a few more days of direct sunlight will allow the winter fog to lift and release the energy that I need to start knocking tasks off the list.
Update: Reading through my news feed I ran across this post A Guide to Cutting Back When You Feel Overwhelmed from Zen Habits.
15th January 2008, 10:09 pm
I just received a notification email that the Ruport Book 1.0.0 has been released and is available on Lulu as "The Ruport Book".
I’m working on a project that needs to process various items and present them in xml and html. I spent several hours with the beta version of the book this last weekend and found it to be very helpful in getting up and running. The book makes it easier to understand Ruport and it’s a worthy addition to your bookshelf.
At the time of release, the PDF version of the book is listed for $8.50 and the paperback book is listed for $30.00. I’m looking forward to my physical copy arriving in a week or so. I purchased a bundle in advance to receive both items.
If you do any reporting you should really consider purchasing this book and supporting the project. That being said, they do provide a free version of the text at the ruby reports website.
12th January 2008, 07:18 pm
Imagine my surprise when a slip of a google search turns up a town with my surname, Thorp, Wisconsin. My earlier years were spent in Sarcoxie, Missouri (pop 1280, back then). The population of Thorp is 1536, from the last census numbers. I’m guessing with a well timed Google street view, you might be able to see everyone in town.
Visiting the cities’ website (http://www.cityofthorp.com/) it looks to be a nice place with lots of civic activities and nice public facilities. Here is a brief history of the town which was founded in 1893.
Thanks Google for bringing me some fun information.
12th January 2008, 06:12 pm
It took quite a while to get all the pieces put together, mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to disable the new canonical URL stuff in Wordpress. Once I located the section of code to comment out, it started coming together pretty rapidly. As part of the conversion process, I also had to upgrade Gallery to Gallery2.
The impetus for the rewrite was a desire to aggregate all of my flotsam and jetsam. I wanted to hopefully drive more traffic to the site so that I can generate a small amount of revenue from ads, books, etc. At a minimum, it’ll help offset the cost of my toys.
What I’ve discovered is that it’s pretty easy to start pulling in the bits and pieces from Twitter, Magnolia, LibraryThing, et al. to make a semi-coherent website using the best of breed tools sprinkled around the net.
I’m keeping www.donthorp.net - Version 1 up and running for the time being, as well as my blog on wordpress blog.donthorp.net.
