{"id":1521,"date":"2015-01-04T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/?p=1521"},"modified":"2015-01-04T14:04:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T22:04:00","slug":"2014-year-in-reverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/2014-year-in-reverse\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Year in Reverse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2013\/12\/2013-year-in-reverse\/\">(Previously.)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If I had any readers who still believe in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A-series_and_B-series\">A-theory of time<\/a>, I might say: 2014 is dead! Gone! Over! But since I probably don't have any readers like that (since I probably don't have any readers, full stop?), it's better to face the truth: 2014 is an immutable part of our universe; just because <em>we<\/em> don't\u2014get to?\u2014have to?\u2014experience it &quot;now&quot;, doesn't mean it has &quot;stopped&quot; existing, any more than 2016 doesn't exist &quot;yet&quot; just because <em>we<\/em> don't remember it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. In that two-thousand-and-fourteenth year of our Common Era, the first year of my life (that I feel comfortable admitting to), and (unfortunately) <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/12\/the-year-of-the-em-dash-not\/\">not actually the Year of the Em Dash<\/a>, this blog saw <em>45<\/em> posts and <em>40<\/em> comments. Among these\u2014<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/native-tongue\/\">weariness of being monolingual was confessed to<\/a>. We saw how to <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/convert-markdown-to-html-within-emacs-using-pandoc\/\">convert Markdown to HTML within Emacs<\/a> (a technique which is proving itself to be of some convenience to your author in preparing blog posts for publication). We considered one weird trick for <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/coffee-names\/\">what to write when you can't infer the correct spelling of someone's name from what you heard<\/a>. It turned out that <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/missing-words-vi\/\">the word <em>apology<\/em> can mean different things<\/a>, and that <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series\/\">characters in popular 1990s science-fiction television programs aren't always completely honest in interpreting the moral law<\/a>. We were prompted to <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/an-exercise-for-the-writer-pretendant\/\">prove why we will never write anything<\/a>. We had <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/last-friday-night\/\">a wild Halloween party<\/a>, noted <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/10\/my-favorite-error-message-this-year\/\">a baffling error message from Git<\/a> (<em>hint<\/em>: commit hooks and virtualenv), and <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/10\/friday-night-lies\/\">drowned our sorrows in tower defense<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/09\/pumpkin-spice\/\">The American coffee hegemon started serving pumpkin spice again<\/a>. There were <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/09\/worth\/\">feelings<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/08\/preemptive-low-status-behavior-is-not-always-a-good-idea\/\">inadequacy<\/a>, at least one contrived <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/07\/growl\/\">distraction from writing that ineffectually pretended<\/a> to not be a distraction, and the occasional <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/07\/a-line-of-code-i-havent-found-an-excuse-to-use-yet\/\">obscure pun<\/a>. We examined <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/where-i-stand\/\">where I stand<\/a> and were enlightened by some <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/standard-advice\/\">standard advice<\/a>. There were more <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/lower-decks\/\">feelings of inadequacy<\/a>. Even <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/05\/a-short-story\/\">conditional on the hypothesis that<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/05\/sub-specie-aeternitatis\/\">all's well that ends well<\/a>, I think it's important to <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/reasons-for-seasons\/\">consider the condition<\/a> of people for which all is not looking to end well. We heard <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/04\/ode-to-swift\/\">a poem for OpenStack object storage<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/03\/lethal-force\/\">a lament against <code>git push --force<\/code><\/a>. I argued that <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/03\/twilight-sparkle-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen\/\">Twilight Sparkle is a disaster waiting to happen<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/02\/motivation\/\">confessed that perhaps too many of my life decisions are determined by what things GitHub happens to provide graphs for<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/01\/the-chocolate-caramel-sea-salt-betrayal\/\">I ate too much ice-cream once<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2014\/01\/consistent-hashing\/\">explained how consistent hashing works<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And as for that <em>other<\/em> nearby immutable span of reality, the one called 201<em>5<\/em>? Well, <em>that<\/em> would be telling (and <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2013\/12\/thinking-about-writing\/\">I can't know that from here<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Previously.) If I had any readers who still believe in the A-theory of time, I might say: 2014 is dead! Gone! Over! But since I probably don't have any readers like that (since I probably don't have any readers, full &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/2014-year-in-reverse\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1521"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1524,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1521\/revisions\/1524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}