Random Thoughts

What is a man's place in history? Why do so many try so hard to leave their mark? To be remembered for generations to come, good or bad, for better or worse. In a way, isn't this the true form of immortality? What is the existence of a man? Can we really say a peasant, who toiled the earth two thousand years ago truly existed? What if he left no trace of records, no pots, no mudhuts to prove his existence? What if he had no place in history? We do not doubt our own existence, nor do we doubt the unexistence of anything until we have found their imprints in the sand. Generations later, who will remember me? Two hundred years later? Two thousand years? Two million? Will the human race even be remembered? If the human race was to be never discovered once we are extinct, then did we really exist? Is existence really just a concept that really is the creation of our minds. Maybe anything we can imagine, speculate, and cannot disprove of, exist. How can a worm ever know the existance of the seeds of an apple until its has reached it.

Goodies

My midterms are done. I did pretty badly on the last midterm, but I guess 2 out of 3 isn't so bad. I retreated back into my room again this weekend. It really isn't healthy, but I feel the need to make up for all the lost slacking time of the midterm week. I have a suddenly interest in Win32 programming, as everything I'm done up till now really don't feel like "real" programming somehow. Plus I really want to understand enough Win32 stuff to make some games. Venturing out into the chaotic soup of Win32 lingos seems to be a step in the right direction. I found some interesting articles while searching for win32 API tutorials online. Check out the Bartosz Milewski's explanation of Microanthropic Principal for a very detailed and fascinating possible explaination of our physical reality. I've read about most of the theories he talks about in the article, but he connects them up nicely, and actually states the big picture in an understandable fashion. A number of problems I bumped into while working recently had again made me question the usage of javascript rollovers in websites. They are such a mess to implement and maintain. It's one of those archane methods that really just need to die. The same effect can be achieved in CSS relative easily, and is way more portable. Check out This Example. While we are on the topic of CSS, here are some neat things I came across: Custom Underlines and Faux Columns. Some live examples of custom underlines can be found at CSS Zen Garden. Maybe I'll write up some little tricks I used with CSS design in the future.