On possibly biting off more than you can chew

In my last post I talked about my difficulty learning to write html code. It was a fun and simple project to undertake, but I tend to be excitable about things I get interested in. Sometimes this is not a good thing. Other times it leads to me see things through that I normally wouldn't. I think it's a fair trade.

What does this have to do with my last post? Simple, I took the next logical step. I started my own website. I researched how difficult and expensive it is to host a website through a webhosting provider. I finally decided, through a friend's recommendation, on dreamhost.com. I paid my $90 for the year and I was off and running. Or so I thought.

Immedidately there was a problem. Somehow Dreamhost had charges me for two accounts. So what should have been an expensive, but doable, $90 turned into an outrageous $180. A quick email and and hour later and the problem was fixed. I pieced together a little code and through it up on the website (after another little bit of trouble, which was again resolved quickly). Boy was I proud. I couldn't believe it. I had my own website.

Imagine then my shock and heartbreak when I discovered the next morning that it had disapeared. I checked my panel at dreamhost and could no longer see my website. I didn't feel heartbreak in that moment, but it must have something like it. Thankfully another quick email resolved the problem (if you ever commit to owning your own website, I highly recomend dreamhost.com, their support is outstanding). Apparently they had erased both accounts instead of only the extra one.

Now the real fun began. My friend who recomended dreamhost also told me about worpress templates and how I could use them to quicly throw up a website. "Nah," I said, "I want to design one from screatch." That was the point, I think, where I went from enjoying my project to completely choking on it. I'm pretty capable with computer programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, but designing a working webpage was much more complicated than I intitially thought. I spent the past week designing, troubleshooting, getting so frustrated that I contemplated throwing my computer against the wall, and then eventually, finally, finding a way to make it work.

If you had asked me two hours ago. I probally would have said that I wanted my money back (dreamhost actually has a 30 day warranty where you can get a full refund if you're not satisfied with your account). But I really wouldn't have. That would have been quitting. I'm glad I saw it through to the end, and hopefully, as I spend more time with it, it will grow and become something I am really proud of. Now I am simply content to have it exist for the time being.

Oh, and you can check it out at www.thisisthacarter.com.

Custom email signature

This is going to seem like a weird post. That's because it is. I got the idea to create my own email signature from scratch for use with gmail. The problem is, I don't know how to write html code (html code is the computer language that comprises about 99% percent of the internet). So with plenty of free time at work I got started learning what I could. I got pretty far, but eventually ran into a snag in finding the images I wanted to include in the signature on the internet. I wanted to include a symbol for my google profile:
A symbol for my blog:
and A symbol for my youtube channel:
I didn't want to start a flickr page or something along those lines, because really I don't take that many pictures. How to find the exact images I wanted without uploading them to some strange website? Simple, upload them here. From now on, hopefully, the images you have just seen above will be referenced in my email signature. Problem solved.

Baku City Wall

A few weekends ago my roommate and I decided to do some exploring in the city. Two months of spending your weekends in the same places caused me to become a little bored and resentful of Baku. The city has such potential, but they just don't really put forth the effort to make this a marketable place to visit.

Anyway, I had wanted to visit inside the original city wall for a while, and so we made our way down through the city to the main gate. Inside the wall was peaceful and quiet. The government restricts the car traffic through the wall and as a result the environment lends itself much more to exploring. Back through alleys and over the top of buildings we made our way through the old city, enjoying every minute of it. Overall the experience brought about a new found love for the city of Baku and coupled with it a heartbreak that they do not make the effort to clean up the rest of the city and make it more like the old city.

Azerbaijan II: Azerbaijaning Harder

Here is another little video I threw together showcasing some of the interesting things I've found around the city of Baku. My favorite part was getting to go to the Azerbaijan National Auto Show and seeing the tremendous amount of european cars there. Just see for yourself. Also featured are my roommate Thomas and our translator/fellow engineer Volkan. I'll be posting another video soon showcasing the inside of the city wall, so stay tuned.

'...'

This past weekend I had the good blessing to see two things which I am not exactly qualified to describe well. One of which I am pretty confident I will never see again. I was flying on a plain from a dismal week of work in Baku and toward the promise of a free weekend in Abu Dhabi. Coming into the city of Dubai the Persian Gulf was lit by small oil rigs and fishing boats, an amazing sight to be sure. I saw a firework firework burn out almost level with the plane, and thought, 'who's shooting fireworks at 2 o'clock in the morning?' And then it hit me. It wasn't a firework at all. It wasn't a rocket or another plane. It was a shooting star. In the clear desert night sky over the persian gulf I got to see a shooting star up close. I saw it streak across the atmosphere and fizzle in a shower of sparks. I couldn't believe it. I don't even know how to describe it in a way that will remotely convey how cool it was. This I will never get to see again.

Still flabbergasted from my spotting of the shooting star, the plane continued it's descent into Dubai. Which brings me to the second amazing sight from this weekend. Towering above the city was the world's tallest building, the Berj Dubai. I have been to New York and I have seen the Empire State Building, but what makes the Berj so unique is the fact that there is nothing around it. Even the tallest buildings around are only a third of its height. A fact I was reminded of by my cab driver when I returned to Dubai three days later. 

I think it is awesome that I went into trip wanting to see Dubai and came out of it hardly having been impressed by what I saw, all because the most brilliant of manmade constructions couldn't compare with the amazing beauty of God's creation. 

On what is allowed

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm making a transistion into a philosophical hobbiest. Spending large amounts of time away from everyone and everything I know just tends to bring it out in me. I don't have much to occupy my time other than a little bit of work and a lot of free time to read, doodle, and shoot some occasional video. Which brings me to what I've been thinking about a lot lately. Freedom.

I read this book called Little Brother. I had heard about on a couple blogs I frequent and their praise, coupled with the fact that it was one of a handful of english books available here, had me intrigued. To say the least I was blown away. This book is fun, way fun. If you have ever had any interest in tinkering with things, computers, or the internet, you might want to pick this book up. I seriously geeked out. Everytime I sat down to read I had my computer there with me and every couple of pages I ended up googleing something with the thought of 'you can do that?' running through my head. 

Sadly the book doesn't exactly deliver on the narrative front. It eventually runs out of steam and drags itself up to a climax that is a whimper compared to the solid first act. Part of the reason is that the author makes the decision to preach to the reader in what I can only assume is the hope that they will accept his point of view without the processing the argument that he is delivering. He repeatedly 'Bush bashes' (Bush isn't a character in the novel, I'm just using that to summerize his overall contempt with the Department of Homeland Securities policies) and I found myself thinking, 'I can't agree with this.' I am not a staunch liberal detractor that thinks he tried to burn our country to ground, nor am I a hard core Bush supporter,  but I prefer to give the man the benefit of the doubt. He's the President. He knows more about this country than you and I will ever know. 

But I've gotten off topic. Freedom is...to tell the truth I'm not exactly sure what it is. To each person it may mean something different, but when it comes to political freedom and individual rights I have to draw a line right down the middle. I don't think that everything in the Patriot Act was justifiable, but I do feel that the Goverment has some amount of athority to tighten security in certain key areas. "Certain key areas" being the operative words. One example from the book is a reference to a court case in the early 90's. The case was Bernstein vs. The United States. In it, the Government argued that the computer code written by Daniel Bernstein for his doctoral thesis on applied mathmatics was illegal because they couldn't crack it. The brightest minds working for the NSA couldn't crack it so obviously this was dangerous right? Well you might be suprised to learn that you have at one time or another used Daniel's encription. If you've bought anything online using your credit card or paypal you've used it. If you've managed your bank account online you've used it. It keeps your information from falling into hands that you'd rather it not fall into. What the government didn't approve of ultimately bettered the lives of the American people, it made them safer. But there are numerous times when a particular device or loophole the government didn't approve of has killed thousands of people. It's hard to draw this line, and it is never a straight one, but it is important to think about. To have an opinion. 

In the end I think the best view point to have is to actively seek dialogue on the subject. Everyone is going to think something different than their neighbor and I believe that only by confronting the opposition head on can you justifiably rest in your beliefs. 

On Imitation

It has occurred to me that my English has gotten worse. I could point to the fact that I haven't written a paper in five years, or the fact that I haven't read a really good novel in a while, but I think there is another reason. I've started to imitate the local people.
Many people here speak fragmented English, which for some odd reason I have adopted when speaking to them. Automatically my brain slices and dices my sentences and they come out sounding remarkably similar to how an Azeri person would speak. Whether this is helpful or degrading to Azeri people, or people that don't speak English well, is a mute point, but what this got me thinking about was how people tend to imitate others.
It seems that in societies that are blessed with the ability to be somewhat decadent and able to neglect utilitarianism there is a tremendous pressure upon people to be creative. Be different. Go against the grain. Think outside the box. Those that we look up to, are those that create. They give us something we never would have conceived of, or better yet something we think we should have.
It occurs to me in writing this that this topic could get very complex very quickly. I could branch off into philosophizing about how our imitating things really hearkens back to some basic instinct of wanting to be creative and thus imitating God, or how there are no new stories, only new characters, but I won't.
What really interests me is the thought that learning comes through imitation, especially in regards to language. You want to influence people, just change the way you talk around them. See how long it takes them to adopt your words (Parents know just how influential their words can be on there children, for better or worse).
We imitate. There are no if's, and's, or but's about it. It is kind of suprising that people have such an aversion to something they practice regularly and have gained so much from. Or maybe it isn't. I don't know.