I haven't blogged in ages due to the fact that I'm now a Dad (check my shorts, holy crap) and I've started a new job in a new city... I've been busy. However, I just had to write about this cool trick.

In my new company I'm now a Windows Programmer (ack!) and am feeling quite out of my element. In order to feel more comfortable I have, of course, installed Cygwin. I got BASH all set up with my favourite settings and my directory stacking functions but found that ls just wasn't working well when on some network drives that had a lot of files. The reason it wasn't working well is because it was aliased to ls -F --color=auto which means that it's going to have to look up a lot of information that it normally wouldn't have to do, and on some network drives with a lot of files, this can take a ridiculous amount of time (say 20 seconds).

So, what to do? Well, the solution was extremely simple because I had already included the directory stacking functions mentioned earlier. Because the "cd" command is replaced by my own function, I have ultimate power to modify a whole bunch of stuff based on which directory I've changed into.

I won't replicate it here because I've added the information on this page, but basically what I can do is check to see if I'm on a network drive, and if I am then change the aliases for "ls" to be something a little simpler, and when I'm on a local drive, change them back. Of course, you can customize this further by choosing certain network drives or certain directories in certain network drives, etc...

Well, kudos to the Brits. It would seem that the UK government has rejected Intelligent Design as a "scientific theory" to be taught along side Evolution. It's nice to see a government that does not bow to the religious pressure being put upon it, like in other countries (mine included). It's not a hard-line answer, but it's about the best one could expect from a governmental body.

A religious belief system is just fine, so long as it's a personal belief system. When you try to push that system onto individuals, groups, or entire civilizations then it becomes a problem. ID has no benefit to the world, as a whole. It answers no questions, makes no predictions, teaches us nothing about how things work, does not further medical understanding, or biology, and simply wastes time. Believe it if you want, but don't push it on everyone else.

Those that believe ID, tend to "poo poo" science, yet are quite happy to accept drugs to cure diseases, discovered through the study of evolution. We would never have made those discoveries through the "study" of Intelligent Design. In fact, there is nothing to study at all... "God created everything". That's what you learn in minute one, of day one, in the ID class. After that, what else is there? When you ask questions, like "Why do Kiwi birds have wings that they never use?" one can only answer that God designed it that way and we don't know why, and never will. It's a dead end. I never really understood what the point was in "teaching" it at all.

Well, congrats to the Britons! Chips, Monty Python, and now this... well, I'm impressed :)

I saw about 100,000 tadpoles today when I was hiking with the dog. I had no idea there would be so bloody many of them in this particular (not terribly huge) pond!

They're starting to transform into full-fledged frogs now, as can be seen by this big guy here:

I'm surprised that so many tadpoles are there and these guys are so big. I figured that there would be bigger tadpoles or something, I guess. But basically, if all of these tadpoles became frogs I think the forest would be overrun :)

Yeah, so basically, she doesn't "get" gravity. Yeah, sure she's never seen the light of day, and all of her experiences to date have to do with sloshing around in amniotic fluid, staring at... well... nothing, and listening to "Charlie Brown Teacher" like voices all day long but hey! I'm not asking her to know the acceleration value of gravity, or know how to calculate the orbits of all objects in an N-Body simulation. All I'm asking her to be able to do, at this tender age of, well zero I guess, is to know which way down is. Apparently, that's a bit too difficult for her though, cuz we just found out that she's headed for a breech birth and we've gotta cut her out. Well, not "we". I mean, the surgeon's gonna do it, but still... the point is to head down, you crazy little girl. I don't think my dreams of having her get a PhD in Physics are off to a great start.