Milestones 18/04/2008

Since it's the end of the (working) week, and I think all reflection on progress is good:

• 120kg squat, a new PR by 5kg. There are currently a bunch of challenges on at my gym, one of which is max. squat. I was interested to learn that though plenty of dudes squat much more than me, as a percentage of bodyweight I'm doing the same as all but the strongest guys (1.7xBW)
• Submitted a quote for a big project. Still anxiously awaiting a response. Planning out the quote was a good experience — I think we did it much better than last time and have a very solid plan to guide development. Also had a new idea for a product while developing the quote.
• Made more steps towards the PhD. Writing a literature review at the moment. It is tedious but useful.

The Ressurrection

This blog is back, for no better reason than I felt like commenting on another blog shutting down its comments thread.

I'm kinda ambivalent about comments. Community and all that, but once you get past a certain size the drive-by commentators coming crawling out of the 'tubes. You know, the guys (presumably they are always men) who leave a comment along the lines “You're such a n00b. If only you understood blah blah blah you'd realise how correct I am!” then disappear, never to explain their point in terms comprehensible to anyone who is not them. They can't be doing it because they want to teach, as if they did they'd hang around, engage in dialogue, that sort of thing. So they must be doing it for the ego-boost, which is pretty sad and lame. No wonder Megan got tired of that.

Rather than comments I'd prefer everyone to comment on their own blog. This gives more accountability, so would tame the trolls I think. Unfortunately the tools for following conversations between blogs are pretty lame. Blogger, for example, doesn't seem to support trackbacks. So here we are, in the best of no worlds.