rg123

Duke, UNC, and NC State are all good, with othe smaller colleges in the area as well - and the NC School of Science and Math (high school for gifted/talented math/science) is worth including, too. I think the IBM campus in RTP is its largest. Several other tech companies in RTP as well. Easy weekend trips to the beach or the mountains (I have done day snowboarding trips to the NC or VA mountains by getting up early enough, and Snowshoe in West Va is not too bad a trip, if you're into snow sports.) It's a good area..

Showers (and lockers if other lockable storage is not available) at work places would be needed, too, for bike commuting to be viable for a lot of people.

In addition to the ideas for what do to while driving, consider avoiding driving during rush hour to cut down on the time it takes. Even if your work schedule isn't flexible, this might still work for you. Depending on what kind of exercise you're into, maybe you you can do the drive earlier to avoid rush hour and then spend that pre-work time at a gym near (or, if you're lucky, on site at) work. I've worked at companies that had on site gyms and showers. One site I was at had a huge building complex large enough that just walking different routes in it, including stairs, etc. was a viable exercise option, and quite a few people took advantage of that, particularly when the weather wasn't good enough to walk or run outside. You could do something similar after work, too, depending on how desirable that is with respect to your personal life - spending time at or near your work location while the evening traffic gets past its worst. Doesn't have to be exercise - could be reading or working on some personal programming project on a laptop at a Starbucks or some similar place near your work. Maybe you could find (or start) a chess or go club that meets some evenings near your work, etc., depending on what you're into.

I agree with you there, too.

I think posts to pay-per-view stuff ought to reflect that in the title. Knowing this is out there for purchase has value, just like knowing a new book on whatever topic was available for purchase would have value - and the site as a business model has interest, too. But the title should indicate it's that kind of link IMO.

The way he demonstrated what he was talking about with the way he talked about it reminded me a bit of the dialogues in Godel, Escher, Bach. Cleverly done.

I 2nd this completely re: Twisted documentation. When Twisted's communication via their documentation has been so lacking/off-putting/etc., it is hard to feel sympathy for a Twisted guy complaining about the lack of communication from people who chose a different route.

The article was prompted by some assertions on StackOverflow that pickle was secure or "secure enough", etc. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1389738/how-to-save-data-...

I really like this response. Not that I didn't like the study - it made no claim of proof, just support, and was a neat idea. Too often we see this kind of thing written up in articles or blogs with only the one interpretation w/o consideration of other explanations. I've seen this in corporate meetings re: whatever measurements, too. Nice study idea, and nice reminder here that supporting results fail to disprove but do not prove.

It's funny that newspapers think search engines are the problem. The real problem, it seem to me, is that most stories of any value that I find in a Newspaper are AP wire stories - and regardless of which Newspaper or other source I go to, those stories are exactly the same. It greatly reduces my motivation to buy any newspaper as long as even one of those with AP wire stories (or any other AP story source) is free somewhere on the net. I worry about how good investigative journalism can be maintained, so am not celebrating this - but the days when so many newspapers could profit from the exact same content are over. Maybe newspapers with large enough local markets for non-AP local stories can provide enough value there to keep themselves afloat - but there are increasing alternative sources of local information, too.

Since it will take a while for the 3rd party libraries to be ported to 3.x, start with 2.6. The versions are not different enough for it to be a big problem either way you learn them - but there are more books out for 2.x - like the Python in a Nutshell book, which I find to be the best reference (though not the best book for beginner programmers). Then, you can refer to the "What's New in Version x" entries in the documentation on the Python site to learn the later versions.

In addition to the Ko rule, you might want to consider handling the other repeated postion situations like at:

http://www.britgo.org/rules/molasses.html

Rules vary for these, though. See:

http://www.britgo.org/rules/compare.html#rept

The British Go Association has a great site in general, with good info on computer and online Go playing resources.

I agree with those recommending Python as a great first language to learn. You can download it for free at the Python web site, which is www.python.org. Get version 2.6.2 for now. Experimenting with the interactive interpreter and with running programs you save as .py files is easy with Idle, which is included. (You can write Python programs in other editors, but Idle should be fine to start with. In particular : VIM, mentioned by sunkencity, is an extremely powerful editor, but not at all intuitive, with a steep learning curve requiring a lot of practice to get productive with it - so save that for later.) See the tutorial and other documentation on the Python site, as well as its links to other information.

One very positive thing about the Internet is that, even if your outlook is not common in your physical community or society in general, you can find virtual communities where you do fit in. This can definitely help avoid that alienated feeling.

One way I can relate to what you're saying is that I am not religious, yet most people I encounter offline, including pretty much all of my family and most of my friends, are. It's nice to find that it's not at all difficult to find people online who share my views on religion.

Yet, I still do have good relationships with friends and family despite differences on religion and other subjects - and I think the key to this is focusing on the common ground we can share and enjoy together instead of on the differences. After all, we're all human beings with different emotional biases and flaws, even those of us who consider ourselves among the more rational. And love and enjoyment of art and music and nature and sex and humor, etc. - all of that is emotional rather than rational. So for all the problems we get from irrationality, we also get the positives.

All the crap out there in the world can be dismaying, but eventually, you know, the sun will burn out and this world will be dead, and even if the human race manages to migrate elsewhere, at some distant time beyond the death of this solar system, the universe will collapse back in on itself (or whatever), so keep things in perspective. Improve what you can improve in life, and enjoy what you can enjoy, and don't get overwhelmed by the lack of perfection in the world, because everything is ultimately temporary.

I recommend Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition by Alex Martelli. It is very concise, without the newbie stuff, and does point out some specifics that might surprise someone coming from Java and other languages. It's a good Python library reference to have on your bookshelf, too.

This book covers up to Python 2.5, but you could then read about the changes in Python 2.6/3.0 at:

http://www.python.org/doc/