Java woes

Who would have thought that installing Java on Linux would be such a headache? I finally managed to do it, though! I have Fedora Core 6, which uses yum to manage packages and installations. FC 6 comes pre-installed with Java 4, which is woefully out of date for what I need. Turns out, what you need to do is download the bin for Linux, run the script to install it (for me, it downloaded it into /usr/java/jdk1.6.0) After that, you use the alternative (type man alternative for more information) and installed it as a second "alternative" to the java 1.4. This works but it will not allow you to automatically receive updates from yum.

You get it in a couple of minutes. Took me 4 hours. :-P

You never know what you'll find

To all budding graduate students out there, let me make a recommendation to you--go back and look at previous people's work. Not just the real recent stuff that everyone keeps reusing. Go to your University library, go to the stacks, and look at the old, dusty books that no one has seen in 20 years. I just finished reading a collection of papers on Logic/Functional programming edited by Doug DeGroot and Gary Lindstrom and it was pretty amazing the things I found out. I found some pretty straightforward solutions to problems I've been having for a while now in my work. I also learned that some of my "new solutions" weren't so new at all. So...it always pays to look at older work, even in a field like computers where ideas are always best viewed when they're at the state of the art.

Tonight, we begin our acting class......

Because I have very little theatrical talent and am not good looking enough to be a movie start that would grace the halls of the Actor's Studio, here are my responses to the questionnaire by the great Bernard Pivot.

What's your favorite word?
Ameliorate

What's your least favorite word?
C#nt

What's your favorite sound?
My girlfriend laughing.

What's your least favorite sound?
A dump truck or any kind of truck, really, down-shifting.

What turns you on?
An interesting problem to solve.

What turns you off?
People who think they are smarter than they really are.

What's your favorite curse word?
S$*t

What profession would you like to try?
Politician or someone involved in foreign policy.

What profession would you not like to try?
Anything involving singing, acting, etc.

If heaven exists, what would you like to hear St. Peter say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
We looked at your rap sheet, but we'll let you in anyway.

A Work-Related Rant

I'm SICK of the options available for preparing a good paper and their associated citations. I'd LOVE to use OpenOffice Writer; I like the system and they have a good formula-writer, which is something I need for a lot of the semantics work I'm doing. Unfortunately, their ability to support citations SUCKS! The other alternative is to use LaTeX and BibTeX together but all of my reference information has been stored in EndNote and to get a BibTeX library together will require me to gather more information about the references, come up with my own labels AND, after that, have to maintain 2 different libraries. JabRef seems like a good tool for maintaining BibTeX entries but I have well over 100 references I'd need to hand label to use in a LaTeX document. EndNote is where all of my materials are at the moment but GRRRRR! I hate Microsoft Word. It tries to be "helpful" and format all of my writing. I'm just going to have to suck it up until the Bibliographic extension is finished. I guess Mick was right--you really can't always get what you want.

Anyone that has a suggestion out there in the blogsphere PLEASE let me know.

Pachelbel Rant

I wish I could take credit for this discovery but actually it was my girlfriend. There's a guy on YouTube named Rob Paravonian. He's pretty funny. His humor (at least what you can see of it. Please post more of your stuff!) is pretty high-brow and doesn't include a whole lot of 4-letter words.

I took exception to the dig at the second violins--I was a second violin! We deserved some good melodies, dammit! :)

Hello World

As part of my New Year's resolutions, I'm working towards becoming more organized. As a part of this, I would like to post some of the conversations I have "with myself" (scary, huh?) so I don't have to remember them for the next social occasion. This blog will include my opinions on things in general and will also include parts of my research. So, when you see an article of the formal semantics of the relational programming paradigm applaud me in the comments and tell me to keep it up. When you see articles on this week's episode of 24, please tell me I should be doing work. My friends and family may find my blogs on day-to-day items interesting. Researchers may find my research interesting. Please feel free to provide comments when you want.

Look forward to hearing from you!