In a recent posting to his weblog, Russell Beattie lists some of the things he'd like to get round to doing, then comments:

Obviously I don't have 1/10th of the bandwidth to get this all done or even started even if I was a much more organized and productive person than I am now. Which leads to the Geek's Dilema: Which technology will be useful later on. Like I've said a zillion times in the past, there's never been a technology that I've played with and learned that at sometime in the future hasn't paid off at work or on a job. So its important that I do play and keep exploring technology and working on pet projects, but there isn't enough time in the day.

I know exactly how this feels. Yesterday I was reading about C# in a computer magazine and it really made me think I should find some time to learn C#. I remember thinking the same thing, way back, when C# was still just a clever name and few people had yet got their hands on it. Until now I've always tried to resist the temptation to dabble. Part of me wants to get into it. Another part says no, you're a technical author with a family, you don't need to know about C#.

I'm prone to being a Jack of all trades, master of none, so I try to limit myself to spending time on authoring stuff, web stuff and Perl – in an attempt to master those. But then Jack whispers in my ear: wouldn't it be great to write little Windows applications – it would be really useful – I could write Windows versions of the Perl programs I use, then people with no knowledge of Perl, and without Perl on their machine, could run them from their own machines, click-only fashion.

Resist! resist!

I couldn't work out how to add newsgroups in Thunderbird.

This explains how:
http://www.nidelven-it.no/articles/introduction_to_thunderbird_8
complete with screenshots.

Dead easy, once you know how!

I came across the following phrase in some documentation written by a developer:
"... can be used to understand the l33t h4x0r 5p33k used in Internet chat rooms."

I had no idea what this meant, but an Internet search enlightened me:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A787917

Here's the first paragraph from this article (entitled "An Explanation of l33t Speak"):

'l33t speak' is a unique language because it cannot truly be spoken out loud nor can it successfully be handwritten; it is an Internet-based language reliant on the keyboard. It is, however, simple to learn and has much room for creativity.

What a load of rubbish! I came across some sites full of this stuff. As someone whose working life revolves around trying to write clear, concise, accurate and easy to understand text, this stuff is anathema to me.

I griped earlier that the MovableType documentation isn't very good when it comes to how to post your first blog entry. I found a blog called TokyoShoes that contains a tutorial that does the trick - particularly part III. This should be on the MovableType website.

Just came across this nice collection of quotes:

http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk/quotes.html

It includes the following:

• "In C++ it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg."
  Bjarne Stroustrup
• There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  TaXaN (TaXaN @ kotnet.org) 2002/06/03
• Q: How many Microsoft Programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
  A: It cannot be done. You will need to upgrade your house.
  Herman Moons (Herman.Moons @ kulnet.kuleuven.ac.be) 2001/03/30
• Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer.
  Erik Naggum (erik @ naggum.no) 94/08/22
• A bug can become a feature through proper documentation.
  Pete Hagemeyer (hagemepp @ esu.edu) 94/05/24
• Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
  Negrie (negrie @ kotnet.org) 2002/01/23
• "You can have it good, cheap, or fast. Any two"
  Arthur C. Clarke (quoted on Usenet) 1999/01/28
• Q: What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?
  A: I don't know and I don't care.
  Norman H. Cohen (ncohen @ watson.ibm.com) 94/10/14
• "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
  John Lennon