Amazon S3 is an amazing service. I just wrote some code at my day job to utilize S3 to offload static content to S3 which takes a huge load off the web servers. It has an amazingly simple REST API. It's a breeze to use. I'm thinking about using S3 for my own personal backups. The fine-grained pricing is fantastic, just pay as you go.

I am a happy Netbeans user, especially since NetBeans 6.7 was released. I just got a little happier today when I installed the jVi plugin which adds vi / vim features to the text editing portion of NetBeans. It works well, providing a nice synergy of the productivity of the IDE with the power-user text editing capabilities of vi. It has normal mode features that tie directly into NetBeans, so you can do simple things like switching to different tabs without moving your hands off the keyboard. Now all I need is vi style editing in the web browser.

I turned 30 today (well, July 22). Anything I do is no longer fantastic or amazing based on my age. People generally do wonderful, amazing things in their 30's. That's a lot to live up to. For some reason, I thought about mortality today, and it is a surprisingly awful thing to think about. We spend hours a day in a state of dreamless sleep, which doesn't seem to bother us as much as the idea of an eternal dreamless sleep. It is easier, I suppose, to imagine another life after this one, and bank on that. Then there is no fear of death, for death is just a gateway to something "more" real. It seems dubious. Eternal bliss, no suffering? How will my thoughts be like my thoughts now if my brain has rotted away. I know at some level that my thoughts are somehow intimately involved with the chemical and electrical (and perhaps quantum) processes of my physical brain. That part will eventually rot and go away. If I have an eternal spirit within me, does it carry my thoughts? Could they be the same? Non-being is a tough one. Best not to think too much about it.

Here's one thing I don't buy: when people die, we are sad, not for them, but for us, because we no longer have them around. There is more to it than that. We are sorry for the person who has died, because they no longer have life. They can no longer carry on a conversation, eat ice cream, read a book, take a hot shower, fall in love, or travel to Europe. I feel sad when I hear about the death of somebody I didn't know. No loss to me, but some loss to them, right? If not than life has no value to the people living it. That's absurd. Are they in a better place? Can you really say for sure that that soul still exists? Can you, really? You can have faith, but faith coexists with doubt necessarily. I cannot say with certainty that my thoughts will extend beyond the life of my mortal body.