I recently took a stroll through the Princeton Cemetery. It is an interesting place to explore. You have a former president and a former vice president among those interred.
When walking through the cemetery, you can’t help but notice one grave — it is the only one with a statue of the deceased on top. This grave comes with its own mythology, passed down over the years.
The story I’ve heard countless times has never really changed. Paul Tulane who was born in Princeton, moves to New Orleans, becomes very wealthy, comes back to his hometown and attempts to give a sizable donation to Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey) and his one condition was that the university change its name to reflect his generous donation.
After being rebuffed by Princeton University, he would then proceed give his money to the Medical College of Louisiana which did accept his gift and renamed themselves to Tulane University in his honor.
The story continues with Tulane’s passing that the statue on his grave would be erected with his back facing the very university that refused his generous gift, forever shunning Princeton University.
As fascinating this story is, it has been mostly been debunked, though it doesn’t stop students from both Princeton and Tulane keeping the story alive through the years.
The more I researched this for my own curiosity, the more I kept asking myself — how many other pieces of history does oral tradition perpetuate something that is inaccurate or false? And does this happen simply because it is more entertaining than the true story?
Who knows for sure, but it does make for some interesting reading for those of us whom enjoy going down rabbit holes.
Cheers,
–Jon
Right now the world is a pretty crazy place. It is easy for us to feel overwhelmed. The one thing we have to remember is that the world has been through many dark times before and yet we are still here. We as individuals don’t control the situations of others, but we can control our own immediate circles in life.
The passage below is often attributed to the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but there’s some debate that it may have been educator and psychologist Haim G. Ginott.
Whomever wrote it we may never know, but the words hit me hard. I am the decisive element.
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
I have spent some evenings and weekends lately building a new template for this blog. As a new project, I can’t just do a new project for the sake of doing it. There has to be some end result that I gain from. In this case, I am using this as an opportunity to work more with Tailwind to build out the user interface. I’ve been using Bootstrap for like 12 years now and decided to try something different.
Another goal with building out the new UI with Tailwind is I am going to try and focus on building it from the ground up with accessibility in mind. So to that end, I am hoping to refine my skills further.
Unfortunately I cannot really get into the groove with writing more consistently until I get this site looking just how I want it. I am too stubborn haha.
Cheers,
–Jon
Yet again I have managed to neglect my blog for far too long while consumed with various other activities. 734 days of neglect to be exact.
These days outside of work and family my free time has been spent improving my photography skills, learning new technology, and quite a bit of reading.
Perhaps the biggest change over the past couple of years has been my purchase of a Nikon D7100 to replace my old Nikon D80.
The D80 was great for my first SLR and is still a fine camera but just as we see with anything else in technology, things constantly improve.
The one factor that stands out to me as the biggest difference between the two cameras is the high ISO capability of the D7100. While the D80 could theoretically shoot at up to ISO 3200, the quality was unacceptable without a lot of post-production work. Even then the photos were quite noisy. Best bet was to stay below ISO 800 which basically handicaps one third of the exposure triangle.
With the D7100, I have gotten usable, quality shots at as high as ISO 6400 such as the photo above in this post. This has unlocked a great deal of potential I did not have before, especially in low light settings.
I will be posting more detailed examples when time permits.
Aside from photography I’ve made it my mission to master Ruby on Rails this year. It has matured a LOT since I first looked at it some years ago. The way I see it, it never hurts to broaden your skill set.
The thing about Rails that impresses me most is how quick I can go from idea to prototype codebase just sitting down and dabbling. Some of my PHP friends might not want to hear it, but Rails is a better framework than most of the comparable PHP options.
Until next time – hopefully not another 700+ days away!
Cheers,
–Jon
I am quite aware I have not been keeping up to date with my blog. It is unfortunate, but I have been so busy it is almost an afterthought these days.
Sometimes I really do wish there were more hours in the day. Between my family, my job at Princeton, the gym, hockey, creative writing and throwing down code for an application for my new business I am stretched pretty thin.
Hopefully soon I will be able to show off some of the stuff I have been working on!
I will be back to updating my blog once again very soon as things will be settling down soon.
Cheers,
–Jon