I finished the last books of January a few days ago. First was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers. As virtually everyone knows, it seems, that is a great book. The other I finished was another superb book, though not as many know it. Richard Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul is an excellent treatment of, you guessed it, how Paul uses the Hebrew Scriptures. See the review here, if you are interested.

Though I read both of these a while ago, I also posted a review of Linear B and Related Scripts and of John Stewart's America (The Book).

I finished a few more books. First was Wittgenstein's On Certainty (read review). Second was Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. So, I updated my reading list. A also added a review for Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

I do think the questions of epistemology that Hume, Wittgenstein et al. cover are very important. But at the same time I can't get beyond a feeling of the uselessness of a highly skeptical epistemology. I cannot argue with much of what Hume says, for example, but despite its correctness much of it does not ring true to human experience. You can say all you want that our sensory perceptions are not as reliable as we actually think they are in observing and parsing reality, but you will not abandon sensory perception or its input. I still plan on digging in this area. I still need to read Kant (I have read a little, but not nearly enough). I imagine my feeling will grow even stronger, but it is good material to be familiar with given my many crazy interests.

I continue to get a sporadic spray of comment spam, usually for pharmaceutical sites it seems. I'm still manually reviewing them all (so that doesn't take much time), but it obviously working. No more comment span.

Unfortunately, now that I'm home I can't remember where I found this link, so I can't give credit where credit is due. But, here it is nevertheless. 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn't Live Without. There's also some other interesting posts on the site. On another post they point out some nicely designed sites. I like looking at these nice sites, even though it reminds me that I'm still just a code monkey, not a fluffy shiny sparkly flashy CSS guru. Maybe one day I'll be cool like that...

I've never played with CTP's, betas and RC's of any chunk of software as much as I've played with ASP.NET Ajax. That's probably why I'm so very happy that it is finally released. Yay!!! If you are a .NET web developer and haven't tried it, I highly recommend doing so.

I bought a new iPod yesterday. It is a 30 gig model, black and sleek. I have been using an iPod mini now for at least two years. It has served me well, but the battery stopped charging completely. That obviously makes it much less useful. I would have had to start bringing an extension cord with me to the gym. I wonder how long it would have taken the staff to notice and say something...

I like it mucho. It is thinner than my old mini, but probably close to an inch wider. This makes the screen much more readable, so that's fine. It is also color and plays video, two more things that the mini did not do. It only cost me $25 more than the mini did when I bought it way back, so that's not to shabby either.

But I have two not quite so positive comments. First, I don't like the feel of the wheel as much as I did with the mini. You have to press harder to get it to respond. That's going to take a lot of unlearning. Also, it didn't come with a electric socket charger like my mini did. Apparently they don't come standard anymore. Seems a little cheap. The only way to charge it is through USB...unless you happen to have a wall charger left over from when you had a mini :)

Overall, a big improvement. I'm glad I got it. I briefly considered moving to the Zune, but since I didn't actually know anybody who had one, I didn't want to try it. Maybe one day. 

Funny something for geeks.

I just found a really nice article on implementing IDisposable and finalization in .NET classes. Very detailed, useful information.

I started getting my first comment spam. I think the total is up to 8 spams thus far. On the one hand, this does make me feel a little cool. I am apparenly worth blog spamming. On the other hand, I hate it when people do that.

So, I am now approving/deleting all comments before they appear. It is a useful feature that I've been needing to add to my Pylus project. If you make a comment, you won't see it until I approve it. But that shouldn't take long. And yes, comments can continue to be anonymous.

If you ever want to use vmware, here is an online utility for creating virtual disks and config files. I found it very handy...

Funny. Watch it.

Here is a little tip of you're playing around with the "Futures December CTP". If you have been using earlier version of the preview code, you might end up putting this in your ScriptManager to load the preview scripts:

   1:  <asp:ScriptReference

   2:       Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview" 

   3:       Name="PreviewScript.js" />

   4:  <asp:ScriptReference 

   5:       Assembly="Microsoft.Web.Preview"

   6:       Name="Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.PreviewGlitz.js" />

The commenting capabilities of the site have been functional, but not very nice. Html comments were not allowed, as one of you noticed, and the text entry was obviously basic.

I have now spiffied it up. You will notice that you now have the write comments that are very html-ish. Feel free to do so. The text entry control is called tinymce, and it is distributed under the GPL. It is very easy to setup for use on your blog/website. So far I am happy with it. Check it out.

I added a couple new pages to the site. At the advice of a friend I am now keeping a running list of everything I read. It can be found here.

Also, a credits page for the images and code I use on the site that do not originate from my own work. It can be found here.

I also added a link to my aStore. I like the idea of the aStore, but navigation is horrible. Not sure what I can do about that other than write my own :)

Yay! I guess. Happy new year!