March 27, 2005
Some Interesting Things
Wow ... it's been a really long time since I've posted. I suppose the first flush of romance of my blog has passed now, and I'm having to figure out how to keep posting. I've definitely got a lot on my mind ... much of it depressing, since that's how I feel much of the time. But my last two posts (excluding the apology) have been very depressing, and I want to talk about something more encouraging ... you can all breathe a sigh of relief now.
I've been reading and thinking a lot in the past few days ... I've been researching TeX (and though I know it's supposed to be pronounced "tech," I can't help mentally pronouncing it "teks." I suppose Donald Knuth will shoot me now ...), and find it fascinating. Essentially, I'm very attracted to the idea of using a simple text editor (like Vim) to write all my papers and such in. Call it a quirk of my personality. HTML is a pretty decent markup language, but it's inferior to programs like Word in producing printed page material. I am acquiring an active distaste for using products like Word - I suppose the Linux-hacker world is seducing me. TeX, however, is heavily geared toward the production of very lengthy, mathematically intensive material. I believe it can be used for the purposes I have in mind, but it may be very painful.
I also want to learn Lisp, Perl, and maybe Python. I've never cracked into a new language on my own for fun; I've always been driven to do so for a class. I've seen some Lisp, but not enough to really count for anything. I'm thinking (rather devilishly) that when I get the chance, I'd like to delve deeply enough into Lisp to re-write my chess program in it. I imagine the exercise will teach me a great deal about the language. Part of my mind (the nerdy part) is rubbing its hands with glee at the thought of tackling all these new, wonderful subjects and learning something about them.
After spending about four days living and breathing WatchBlog over Spring Break, I got exhausted with the arguments and now I'm somewhat afraid to go back ... mostly because I don't have the energy right now to get sucked back in, but I also wonder if my opponents consider my absence proof that they've won and that conservative evangelicals are chickens who disappear once strongly confronted. I imagine that gives my words far too much credit - I doubt anyone seriously noted my departure. I'm still a little afraid to go back and see. As I think I've said before, I'm fascinated with arguments, but they exhaust, drain, discourage, and otherwise wear me out. When I argue, I am almost always arguing "from my heart" - it's not a game to me; it's deadly serious. As a result, losing an argument hurts a lot, and not knowing what to say or how to answer also hurts. I get too emotionally involved in them - they're less like fencing and more like full combat. That doesn't mean that I'm a brutal arguer - actually, I think I'm rather nice (too much so, possibly), but rather that I take arguments very seriously and invest a lot of myself and my energy into them.
