matt.oddbug.net

Upon installing a new harddrive in my laptop, I needed to reinstall the system. After doing that I was rather annoyed at having to reload some of my settings, including web bookmarks. Additionally, when doing this kind of clean system sweep, I tend to get the itch to try alternative programs. For web browsers, the biggest barrier to trying another program is that all my bookmarks live in my long standing browser of choice - Apple’s Safari. Naturally, I looked for solutions. There are ways to import bookmarks, but then what if I want to go back? There are some programs independent of the browser that keep track of bookmarks, but what if I decide I don’t like that program or I am on a public computer? Quickly, it seemed that some sort of Internet based bookmarking system would be best. This conclusion surprised me a bit, because I’d never been too keen on the idea. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a bookmark I really drug out deep from inside my browser. The website is for a modular roof garden system created by two companies - neither of which tell you much about themselves on their websites except for all the things they are “dedicated” to. From contact information, it appears they are based in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t tell you what I was doing when I found this website, which is really is one of the beautiful things about the Internet.

I think that the idea of having a roof top garden is a fantastic one. Living in Honolulu, where space is so precious, I am surprised not to see more of these. Browsing through some of the projects that have used this system, it strikes me that so many of the installations are ONLY for energy savings or storm water management. Quite a few are ONLY for aesthetics from office windows. It is great that having plants on a building infer such great economic benefits that it is done only for these reasons.

Yet, as much as this seems all good and well, the roof should be a place for people too! Read the rest of this entry »

The Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science by DK Publishing

This book has just enough information to really whet the appetite on all kinds of subjects. It has just enough good pictures to keep a visually addicted person like me engaged and it is brief enough to actually finish a topic. It makes me want to study all kinds of other disciplines. Then the sour sting of bile reminds me how I feel about school. I have this problem where I conflate the knowledge school promises with reality. Never quite kicked that habit from elementary school of tearing up my homework before I even start it, which might not help either.

This book ought to be great light geek reading. Then maybe I’ll pull a Good Will Hunting and go to my library for the free details.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

Listening to NPR last week I heard the author of this book speak about the Middle East. He struck me as quite intelligent and made several good points, though the details of the entire thing have slipped my mind. All I had was the author’s name that I managed to speak into my cellphone’s voice recorder as I drove to work. Luckily, that was enough to track the book down during a trip to Barnes and Noble.

The book is an account of the Islamist movement that lead up to groups like al-Qaeda and the response of U.S. and international intelligence to the growing movement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlen

Since I have a Robert A. Heinlen quote on the main page of oddbug.net, I figured I should read a book by him. This is his most famous and supposedly one of the most famous science fiction novels of all time. I’ve heard it is strange and a bit edgy. It is also not so new, published in 1961. I’ll be interested to see how ideas of sci-fi have held up for that long.

I am looking forward to reading it. I have been taking ever so slightly longer lunches at work to read and give my brain a rest from routine during the day — so there is some chance I’ll get to this book sometime soon.

I have decided to add a couple of groups of book posts. One will be simple — it will simply make entries when I add books to my library. I’ve decided this is a good idea since it is an easy post and it’ll at least express my subject interests (that way I can be judged by my covers!). I also just got a few new books and I am excited to put them up, so I’ll seize the moment!

 Read the rest of this entry »

				

I ran across a very amusing website quite long ago. It is the webpage for an
actual museum, The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), based in Boston. By now I haven’t the slightest idea how I managed to stumble upon this, but I sure am glad I did! I just rediscovered it looking through bookmarks for things worth sharing. There are some real classics, and the art curator descriptions generally send me into a second, heartier round of laughter.

 Read the rest of this entry »

				

This series of posts will be the first concerted effort to get some content up and routinely add to it. It will be in the form of a tour of my bookmarks; I’ll be leading you on a bit of a journey of my browsing habits while on the web, what I have found and what goes on in my head when I decide to follow a certain web page.

Since these posts are meant to give a sampling of my interests on the Internet, the subject range will be broad. At first, these may be fairly random. Well, eternally these may be fairly random. But some topics that first debut here may eventually start a whole new line of posts or discussion — and I’ll do my best to let it evolve that way when it is fit to do so.

My first post in the Bookmarks Series follows this post directly and suitably satisfies the criteria for randomness. Enjoy!

Well, it has been a long time in procrastinating, but here it is — a brand new website. You’ll notice it is sleek, has a little more design sense than the last one or two and the tires feel solid when you kick them.

I have a whole host of ideas for what I want to accomplish here. I won’t get into them as it is too ambitious and far, far too boring. Besides, I’ll be to achieve half of them, so I won’t set hopes to high yet. At mininimum, though, I intend this site to accomplish three basics. First, I hope to be able to share at least a little bit of my life a little easier to a few more friends and family — you. If I can manage to update when I travel it will be a nice travel log, of sorts. Second, it will be a repository for my ideas — organized and updatable from anywhere. Third, through posting my ideas I hope to give some insight into how my gears turn and make some turn elsewhere. I have benefited from others who have posted their ideas and projects online, so I figure I’d do well to pay it forward.

Of course, the first challenge for me is going to be getting some content on here. I decided the easiest and cheapest trick available would be to just move some old stuff here. Inconveniently, little of that stuff isn’t dated or interesting. Nevertheless, I found at least one thing that I figure is most appropriate. In honor of beginning this new website I have enshrined my very first webpages — made my freshman year of college — in this, the first post of a brave new website. You can brave those dusy old pages by clicking on the link at the end of this post. Admittedly, it is not much to look at, but it is amusing to at least look at what my head and feet looked like five years ago. So here’s to the intention to create a webpage, and here’s to giving it a go!

To go back in time and see the last time I started a webpage and didn’t do much with it go to The Life of Matt in College.