BYBS: Learning

In a previous post, I mentioned that exams were an experience in pain. I guess that is a specific example of the maxim: "With pain comes suffering." Hmm… that doesn't seem quite right. I know! It was actually "With suffering comes resentment!" No…that's not quite right either. Perhaps it was "The ends justify the means?" "Sometimes to save something you have to destroy it?"

OK, it was "With pain comes growth." Yes, that was it. Or more specifically, I have found with learning comes growth. Often times pain as well, but that's not exactly what I'm writing this entry about.

The ability to learn, to understand something I could not understand before, or do something I could not do before is an ability I regard as near-miraculous. It is one of the things that mark living creatures. It is one of the things that I think of as necessary for intelligence.

For someone like me, it is a big part of spirituality.

In particular the ability to learn from mistakes is an important aspect of spiritual growth. It is often times hard for me to admit mistakes. "I was wrong" is something I do not like to say, even to myself. This is partially because it seems to happen a lot, and partially because it is not something that I hear from a lot of people.

But being able to do something that I could not do before opens up a whole new world. The person I thought I was may not be correct; limitations I thought I had may no longer apply; other possibilities that I thought were closed may now be open. That part is a truly wonderful experience.

I am not a real big fan of effort or pain. But I have to admit, the cost of effort and pain are temporary. The opportunities of learning are…

The New Template and Blobs o' Code

One of the things that I have my own share of are leetle blobs of Javascript I need to put in my template for things like hit counters, Technorati, etc. The annoying thing about doing this (OK, one of the many annoying things) with blogger is that their template contains enormous amounts of weird code. This makes it very difficult to figure out where my stuff should go.

One of the features of the new scheme is being able to add arbitrary bits of HTML or JavaScript to the template. This is nice because I can avoid digging through the blogger template and just throw my stuff into a section of its own.

This doesn't solve all the problems I end up having. For example, to verify a site with Google, you have to put a meta tag in the template. Adding meta tags pretty much requires editing the HTML of the template, but at least some of the other stuff has been made easier to deal with.

Slowly but surely…

Close Enough for Now

Converted over to the new Hoity-Toity style. After trying to edit it I just have to wonder if blogger pays developers to be this obtuse with there HTML, or does it happen by accident? At any rate, things will be a little screwed up or at least different from whatever passes for normal on this site until I figure things out. Please stay tuned.

Blogger Does this…Intentionally

So I decided to put all my stories on that other blog so that they wouldn't mess this one up. This means taking the text from this blog and pasting it into posts on the other blog.

Simple, right?

Not with Blogger.

You see, Blogger harkens back to a simpler age. A time when ASCII graphics were still cool. A time when men were men, women were women and sheep were nervous. In short, it was a time when creating a decently formatted text document was like passing a watermelon through one's colon.

What's more, I don't think this is an accident. I think that Blogger is aware. Like the Matrix.

And it's watching me.

And giggling.

Or at least I hope someone is getting a kick out of this, because trying to do something as simple as transferring a post from one blog to another is way too hard.

"God hates me."

"Hate him back, it works for me."

Lethal Weapon