I enjoy coding things myself despite all the extra work it creates.
October 18, 2006
1968: The Start of the Technological Revolution: When did the tech revolution really start?
Affordable Rural Broadband: Some high speed access is out in the country, but it's expensive.
Am I Old Fashioned? Thoughts on Change: Andrew writes about his thoughts on a changing world.
As A Computer Programmer: One of a series of essays on different carrer options and what they entail.
Bureaucracies Have Political Cultures: Despite the image of apolitical life in bureaucracy, the people who make government work are often very political.
Bureaucracy: It's Problems: The reality of bureaucratic thought in our society.
Canned Reality: A discussion of video games, and television, and their effects on society.
Criticizing Technological Rationality: A careful analyisis of role of technology and bureaucratic rationality on the world around us.
DTV: Time To Get Rid of Your TV?: They won't work next year, so recycle 'em, and look to other sources of news.
Email and Spam: Many of us just get too much useless information but at least we don't have to dispose of it.
Highly Urbanized Computing: How Windows XP is not unlike our big cities.
Hudson Valley Not Tech Valley: Our future is in diversity, not technology.
In a Computerized World: Are We Humans Anymore?: Andrew asks if in a computer dominated world, if being a person means anything anymore.
Malta's Reality: Far from being a great tech center, it shows the freedom of rural life.
Nation of Managers: Management is not a solution to our problems.
Post-Modernity: Five areas of study that allow us to see beyond the limits of science and technology.
Running out of Freedom: It sometimes seems like that I've seen everything locally (eventhough I haven't), and that finding cgreener pastures is getting harder.
Simplicity: For the Web, For the World: Simple webpages present information quickly. A simple world makes sure we get that infomation.
Tech Valley Realities: High Tech in Albany won't just give us jobs, it will also change cultures and increase sprawl.
The Endless Freedom Assault of our Technocratic Society: How somehow our fixes to our problems may actually make things worst.
The Parthenon: Technology and Politics: Reviewing the relationship between technology, politics, and a greater society.
The Story of the Non-Programmer: Sometimes thinking about who you have been, can take the stress off a rough day, and the bad memories that a class may bring back.
Tired of Computers? I Don't Think I'm Alone.: After a long semister of dealing with them, and doing lots of school work, he's just plain tired...
Twitter: A fun way to share what your doing with the world.
Webpages: Keep 'em Simple: We need to have simple webpages that load quickly.
Wireless Internet: Free hotspots make it possible for us to access high speed internet without cost.
People are often amazed that I wrote all the code that makes New York Cowboy.org. I don't use any type of blogging software except for the code that I've written line by line in perl and mysql. The only exception is a recently added feature—commenting which is controlled by WordPress—and even that is essentially hardwired into by the NYC code.
Yet, I don't give up having a modern blogging tool. I've created all kinds of RSS feeds, everything is database-based nowadays (though I resisted for years), and can be edited through a magical web editor just like WordPress and the rest of your pre-rolled blogging software. NYC doesn't give up much for being totally written by myself. It's faster to blog then all of it's competitors and it's results are vastly superior.
I enjoy writing my own code and I don't like using other people's code. People ask why do I insist in coding everything myself. After all I have better things to do then spend hours behind the secenes hacking away at sometimes very messy or poorly written code. The reason is I like the power of having my own code and knowing what every function does.
Now I realize that perl abstracts a lot of things for me, so I don't have to get my hands that dirty. Yet, I also realize that most people don't even bother to do anything but use a canned blog. They don't want to touch in the inners of blogging, they'd be happy just using whatever the standardized software of the day is. Certainly by doing that you get a more secure software, but you lose the feeling of knowing what your software does and how it truly functions.
I want things to work just as I dream them up. I understand technology has limits, but doing things by hand gives me so much more control then what I can get from canned products. Indeed, I think that's part of my dream of owning a farm—actually being in control of things in once of my life, building a world from the most basic of building blocks.
People say I'm backward for wanting to own something like my own blog code or even a farm. They say there is technologies out there that can do better, there are professional farmers and programmers that are far more efficent. Maybe, but I'll lose control and the greatness of having something that's totally my own.
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