I recently wrote a post about how I moved over to Octopress for blogging and I discussed the small difficulty in naming a new post file. It’s an inconvenience, really, but as they say: death by 1,000 cuts!

To alleviate this, I created a simple Ruby script, based primarily off of the Octopress-included rake task, that creates a new post. More on that script later but I ran into a problem running my script with Alfred.

This brings back a few memories. I had forgotten there were so many variants on the “Choose Your Own Adventure” concept. Am thinking a few of these, or at least the “young reader” incarnations, would make for interesting bedtime reading for the boys.

This is the lightswitch plate I had in my bedroom when I was a boy. It was handpainted by Corinne Ficek, a friend of our family. I no longer live at home but my mom sent this along as a keepsake, or, as I like to think of it, an heirloom for the next deserving nerd in my family.

I turned 40 last fall and it has now been 18 years since I last competed in bodybuilding. Through friendships I made at that time with the amazing UFE fitness competitor Melissa Hooper Francis and her husband Bryan Francis, I’ve been invited to be a judge at the UFE Fury event in Chicago in 2012 and 2013. Naturally you would expect judges of such an event to have a fair amount of experience in the sport and, for those who don’t know me, it’s not immediately clear that I would have such experience. So, for the benefit of anyone who might be interested, I’ve decided to tell the story of my life as a competitive bodybuilder. It started earlier than you might imagine:

Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was already a long-time subscriber to Odyssey magazine at 9 ¹⁄₂ years of age. I knew all of my constellations, stars, galaxies, and various planetary mission. I always enjoyed the artwork submission section - usually filled with amazing drawings by high school age students - and finally came up with a “new” idea for a submission: I would create a picture by coloring and cutting out pieces of a space scene and pasting them on black cardboard paper.

I recently moved my blog from the WordPress engine to Octopress. The page you are reading now is a static HTML page which was rendered by Octopress on my computer and then published to a Linode server.

According to a new article from AppleInsider today, there may be 14 new Mac products next week, most likely to be announced at the WWDC. Based on approximate pricing, it looks like the 17” MacBook Pro will be discontinued. The most powerful new MacBook will be the “Best” configuration of the 15” MacBook Pro. This model is priced at almost $1,000 more than the current high-end 15” model. What could be in that computer to justify such a price increase?

There was some kerfluffle today about telecommuting. Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, has recently banned employees from working from home. Apparently, she believes that working from home decreases productivity.