The writings of Peter Stuifzand

Archive for July 2010

I've been writing this weblog for six years and fourteen days now. That's how long ago I started writing here. It probably is the longest running website, that I have created. Sure, there were changes, like the one from a few days ago, when I removed almost all formatting.

But there are more changes. While building this weblog I created a small software tool called pages that creates and generates the pages and posts for this weblog. In the beginning the pages where created using a small Emacs function. I haven't used Emacs for anything for almost five years now. I can't even use it anymore, Vim is baked into my muscle memory. It's a disorienting feeling, to say the least.

Happy Birthday.

John Carmack on Software Patents:

The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

Charles Bukowski:

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Richard Feynman on doubt and uncertainty:

You see, one thing is I can live with doubt, uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing then to have answers which might be wrong.

I have approximate answers and possible believes and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure about anything and many things I don't know anything about. Whether it means anything to ask, why we're here. What that question might mean? I might think about it a bit. If I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else.

But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things. By being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far I can tell, possibly.

It doesn't frighten me.

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