Good but not Great

People are usually good, and rarely great. Most of us live in a story where we have no defining purpose. A story following a path as simple as the thousand tendrils of a tree, taken root for a century or two. A purpose which so drives us, that a single word may define most of what we are made up of. Most people are good folk. They hear no evil, they see no evil and do no evil. They also hear no good, see no good and do no good. They are for all intents and purposes simply there to fill space and "exist". In the immortal words of wise men of the past,

There are those who change according to circumstances and those who do not. All progress must then be left to those who refuse to adapt, as they are those who impose their will on nature.

Some however strive to be outliers. They notice things and act on them. They are the ones who do not apologize for their opinions and those who do not fear their own actions. These are the great. The great however, are rarely also good. The good shy away from change as a touch-me-not from one's skin. When the great force it upon them, the great are painted in colours belonging to shades of evil. Rarely does a change yield immediate results and so rarely are the great also seen as good.

The good are just as important as the great in determining the world's fate. The difference is that the good determine it by their inaction and incompetency, and the great do it by their action. It takes monumental will or addiction to make a great out of a good.

The Obsession With The Best

A common kind of question I've been encountering now a days is "What is the best X for task Y?". This is encouraging at first sight since it conveys an intent of the questioner in the direction of wanting to complete task Y.

This desire to do some task, however weak or strong, is in itself a commendable achievement. However, the question reveals a deeper problem within the seeker's mind. They have equated the best tools with the best results. It is a classic case of "A good workman does not blame his tools" emerging as a bad workman depends only on his tools.

Instead of focusing on what tool is best for a job, a person should rather be concerned with what is the bare minimum needed to get started with the task. With learning comes the understanding that some tool X is good for task Y only when person Z is using it. It's probably useless in your hands.

WebCheck: A way to watch websites for change in content

There are a lot of times when quick updates are essential to a task. For example when universities release examination forms, or when there is an on line sale for something, or even better, when your favorite blog author publishes something new.

RSS was built to handle such situations, but as we all know, people don't always follow standards. In cases where RSS has not been implemented by site authors, we may use webcheck to keep a watch on the site for changes.

This is a Python3 dependent script that I've used for some time now to keep track of entrance exam notifications. The software and it's installation instructions can be obtained from:

https://github.com/theSage21/reimagined-chainsaw

The way this works is simple.

1. Get a list of links to watch from a file provided by the user
2. Download each link and call it the reference page
3. After a certain amount of time, download everything again and see if something has changed with respect to the reference pages
4. Repeat 3