If you re-engineer someone's Perl code from scratch and your version takes 80% less lines, is more maintainable, but runs for twice as long, is it an improvement?
There's two reasons for an affirmative answer: maintainability is key-- especially when you have other engineers coming to you practically every day with different variations to try-- and computing power only increases with time, so runtime is less and less significant. This is essentially the point of Perl, after all.
...i buy books. Unfortunately, reading them takes longer, so there's a bit of disconnect in my library. But it works well for reference. Having at last cataloged my hardcovers and paperbacks, there's always more to add.
LibraryThing handles online book cataloging well (allowing me to resort by Dewey or Rating or ISBN or alpha on the fly). Delicious Library for the Mac does it offline very well (and very similarly), but with a few differences. The latter allows for inclusion of music and other media and even reads in your iTunes library by default. Also, it can use your iSight camera to scan barcodes from media, making record entry trivial. It even has options for a barcode scanner, if you happen to have one.
As to reading, there's a lot of press (well, html publish actually) recently about the Amazon Kindle. And some libraries provide access to Safari Books Online. But i still prefer the physical manifestation of manuscript. I can use the index to find topics and flip to them quickly, keep my fingers on the different sections, access the book wherever i am, don't have to worry (much) about getting it wet.... There's many reasons to like books. They're solid and dense and smell awesome. Plus they look good on shelves! Now if you'll excuse me, i need to think about dinner and what to wear tonight.
After enduring due derision from essentially every vistor, I got myself a bit more civ'lized, home-stylewize.
I found these structures, flanking the patio doors in the picture, which allow one to layer books on top of one another, thus maximizing storage capabilities of living quarters.
So, for example, those two 'chestnut' structures in the included figure just about precisely hold all the books that previously trimmed my primary living space. Now I suppose the next addition is a machine that sucks up dirt.... sort of creates a, how would you say, vacuum of air around the detritus about the perimeter.
Today was warm but not oppressive, so we went to Heritage Park in Olathe, KS, which turned out to be quite a good spot. We found a geocache that had previously eluded us, spotted turtles and what I have narrowed down to some sort of Heron, and discovered paddle boats that were, unfortunately, out of season.
A few highlights have been posted over at my flickr site. Definitive identification of the bird would be most welcome. Bonus points for the rather large spider, which was prepping it's meals for the next few days when we spotted her.
Got a new member of the household. She's a six-year-old kitty named Kitty. She's a really big sweetie. After spending the first day under the bed, she has begun to come out on her own and snuggle like crazy.
I think she's nocturnal, but she's also house-trained, which is nice. The picture is a bit of a blur, which well represents her dynamism. Now i have to find a vet....
