The Free Arrow

I may soon need to write a simple GUI viewer for a tool I’ve been writing for research. Since the tool is somewhat cross-platform, it would be nice to have a cross-platform UI. It’s been ages since I’ve written such a thing, however, and I’m not sure which toolkit to use. There seems to be a plethora of options: .NET/Mono, GTK, wxWidgets, QT, Java, FLTK, etc. I’ve used at least three of those before but it’s been so long I might as well start over again. Any recommendations?

The BBC is covering a story about a study of hearing habits. Apparently they’ve found that the folks they observed used their right ears significantly more than their left ears. I wonder if this translates to actually being “better” for hearing (habit is not an indication of optimality), and how much of it is simply due to the fact that most of the population is right-handed.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of songs fed to me by the query “celtic rock” on last.fm. I’ve found that I really like the genre. The beat of rock music with the celtic instrumentation is a cool blend, and if anyone out there has suggestions of good celtic rock bands, I’d appreciate it. I’ve already found The Young Dubliners, whom I like a lot. Any others?

Every year, the American Cancer Society sponsors fundraisers around the country to raise money for cancer research. These event is called Relay for Life. I participated in two such events at JMU, and this year, I’m organizing a team at UMD for my Bible fellowship. I believe that furthering cancer research is a worthy goal, that ACS is a worthy charity, and so I’m asking for your support if you are able. If you can make a donation, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

You rock!

Just wanted to announce that I am now engaged to the lovely, gorgeous, and generally amazing Lindsay Walters, whom I have been dating for nearly ten months. I proposed this morning near a beautiful frozen lake in the national park at Great Falls (Maryland side), and she said yes!

Just got back from the craziness that was inauguration ceremony. Lindsay and I got up at 5am this morning (yikes!) and caught the green line metro to L’Enfant Plaza. I have to say, the crowd control seemed to be pretty well-managed and we found it quite easy to meander around the crowded areas. We wandered around the mall until part-way through Obama’s speech, and then we headed home in the hopes of getting out before the crowds hit the metro stations. We were only partially successful, because there was some confusion at L’Enfant and we ended up walking around the capital to Union and taking the red line out to Fort Totten.

In general, though, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. Rick Warren’s prayer was quite decent and the actual ceremony was nice and brief. I was disappointed that the entire crowd on the mall boo’ed George W. Bush–I thought it was disrespectful and general bad form to boo the outgoing president. All in all, though, a very nice experience. I certainly don’t agree with President Obama on all (or even most) issues, but I wish him the very best and will be praying for his term in office.

Here’s an article about “addiction” that I thought was interesting. The question to the reader is this: would the romantic relationships you’ve observed/participated in be considered “addictive” by the measures in this article? I guess the question is whether items #2 and #3 hold, since I don’t think there would be any debate about the applicability of items #1 and #4 in most relationships. It’s an interesting thing to think about.

I received several responses to my last post via email and Facebook, although no one actually bothered to post on this website. I decided to amend my comments a bit because I’ve realized they could be rather sorrowfully misinterpreted. I should also say that I’ve had a really rough day and am feeling a bit defeated right now, so if it sounds a bit fatalistic, that’s probably why.

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I was prepared to accept the inevitable, but surprisingly, even I was shocked tonight as I heard Barack Obama uttering the following words:

“Americans [have] sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

As the last remaining wisps of individual liberty and states’ rights fluttered down like ashes from the fire of zealotry and ignorance, he continued with wave after wave of vague and arrogant rhetoric. After his speech ended with echoing rounds of the mindless phrase “yes we can,” I wondered in astonishment: oh, my country… what the hell have we done?!?