When I was 9, we moved back to Africa after a stint in California and Oregon over 5 years. I went from my suburban Portland elementary school to a strict and proper British school where I was only referred to as The New Boy. It worked out okay; I'm not sure how long it took but soon enough I was David again. This is my first week at Vertigo, and I'm excited to step again into the role of The New Boy. I upgraded my JAPH to a "JAVH" commemorate the experience:

 
map{print "$_ "}
split(/\d/, 
        join('', 
               map /(\w)\w/gi, 
               qw(Jaubsctd1a Aenfogthhiejrk2b Vlemrmtniqgnov3c Hoapcqkresrt)
        )
);

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

From Confucius, Analects

Yesterday I said goodbye to Daktronics, my employer for the last 3.5 years. It was bittersweet. I’m excited for the future but there were many friendships I built in that time that I am leaving behind. Even though I got to work on some exciting projects like Australian Horse Racing systems and large scale IPTV, the thing I liked most of my work was the people around me.

After my goodbye email, I got a lot of kind notes in response. I treasure each one because even though we had performance reviews and official metrics, I think the best measure of performance is what your peers have to say. I can step away knowing that I made a mark and it was appreciated.

The future is on its way and I am looking forward to it. But until the full force of its impact I’ve got a little time to think about the last few years, the friendships I’m going to keep, and the lessons I will be carrying forward.

This is where so many people go wrong, the say "I don't have the talent, I never did... "

I say if you had the desire, you had the talent. What you didn't do was chase it.

A blurb from an interview with Janny Wurts, fantasy author, illustrator amongst other things.

"The real deep down you is the whole universe
You are something the whole universe is doing
the same way a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing"

Sampled on Depth - Self Like Ocean
                

A wish from Neil Gaiman

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Via Neil Gaiman

Like many software developers, I have more than a passing interest in architecture. Over the years I've taken lots of photos and been on a bunch of tours trying to understand that world of the built environment which had so long been invisible to me. I also developed a fascination with architectural form - mainly a Frank Gehry thing but extending beyond him to other architects who know how to push those dynamics and engage a person who finds themselves in front of their work.

I've recently caught myself wondering about that focus on physical form and realizing that much of the time it fits more into the category of decoration or sculptural expression. At its worst, it proclaims "look at me!"

For work I've been to a couple of stadiums in the last month (Target Field, KFC Yum! Center) and it has made me think that the kinds of problems an architect would run into with a facility like that tend to pose some interesting questions - a lot more interesting than a residence or small scale building. Questions like: how does one make it easy for 22,000 people to go to the bathroom? How is a building that large ventilated? How is each point in the building accessible given some maximum distance from an entrance? What kind of material is durable for that much use by that many people?

Although I will still enjoy looking at work that is sculptural and evocative, the more my eyes are opened the more I find the interesting questions asked and answered with work I previously overlooked.

I've had many identities on the web. When I first got on in 1993 as a young and unsure freshman in college it was typical to have a handle; an alias for the new identity one created for themselves online. I don't remember what I started with but over the years I've assumed identities under a bizarre caravan of names, names like Everyman, Hobbitwerk, Metadeveloper, Donkey Kong, Sophtwarez and Parse.

I can't shake the past. Look online hard enough and you'll see its remnants in places beyond my reach, locked into the past but as with everything on the internet, archived whether your posterity would have it or not.

And yet let this mark a new beginning. A line in the sand between what was and who I am now. t3rse (pronounced like the adjective terse) is inspired by the Perl programming language and the ability to express idiom and intent in short form. t3rse is all things David Seruyange; it is my programming projects, my services, my ideology and my nuances.

And who, pray tell, is David Seruyange? I am a software developer living in South Dakota. My Ugandan extraction is the story behind the last name. I've lived in many places, most recent before moving to South Dakota is southern California just shy of the city of Angels.

What is this blog about? This blog is about things I find interesting and the things that go on inside my head. That is what gives the symbol "t3rse" meaning. Robert Pirsig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was writing about perfection and he said the following about getting to perfection in craft:

Some could ask, “Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?” The answer, of course, is no, you still haven’t got anything licked. You’ve got to live right too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together. … The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.

The motive behind this blog is to work on what's inside so that my outer self can benefit from processing what is on the inside. Part of that work is writing about it; being definitive, forcing an explanation so that the ephemeral thought can become a more concrete foothold on the path of being better. I hope other people find value in my efforts of doing so; I know this is a favor I've received from countless blog entries and web sites since those early days in my dorm room on a Powerbook 160.