How Scandinavian of Me

Food/Films/ eh...

2007-03-05T00:53:00.000-05:00

Saw Pan's Laberynth(sp) recently.
Good.

Eight year old was in the audience.
I think his father was a bit surprised by the
film.

Not for the squeamish.

4 of 5 stars overall.

**** story
**** camera
**** acting
*** effects
*** music

----------

Babette's Feast.

4 of 5 stars.

**** story
**** camera
****+1/2 food visuals
**** music

Not fast. Clean story. Straight forward.

Forgot how wonderful it was.

Films that make me want to cook:

Tampopo
Babette's Feast
Eat Drink Man Woman

*sigh*

Good night.

I like wood.

2006-09-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

(written 21/09/2006)

Ok, same night as when I finished my last ramble. Too many things to consider, so
I have to limit myself.

Wood.

I love the stuff, but hate the fact that it's so scarce. I guess I have to accept that it's not my grandpa's world.

Anyway, my wife and I are learning a lot about working with wood. We've been putting finish onto some old cheap bookcases and turning them into wonderful things. Used a dark stain with polyurethane (sp?) finish on top to shine it up (and protect it from little cats' feet).

I am also very interested in learning how to build things with wood. Starting small, as my wife reminded me, is a very good idea. I have the habit of getting ambitious and obsessive with my ideas and I tend to lose patience when incapable of executing them. Small (simple) is better. I need to practice dealing with materials for a bit longer and work with simple joining techniques.

First off, X = 23" Y = 18" Z = 23" end table. no legs, just three boards joined together with finishing nails and looking pretty with mitred joints. just three peices.. or one peice of pine 1x18 by @6 feet

whatever I can get ahold of..

---

Funny thing is, all the time I've spent playing Perl has effected me in thinking about wood. With my ambitious (and as yet unlikely) project ideas, modularity has been at the center of my thinking. If I want to build a secretary, I want to have the basic table entirely independent of the rest of the unit. The drawers should be manufactured entirely seperately and be installable and removable with little fuss.

This is markedly different from a drafting table my wife and I put together sometime ago. The table is a beautiful peice of furniture that really is a good tool for those times when you feel extra creative with a pencil. The problem is that it is put together in a mess of peices that interlock in a most inconvenient way. I think this wierd design actually contributes to it's lightness and reduces the materials needed to construct it, but it still sucks trying to put the bugger together. So, it's modular for me!!

goodnight.

Post over a couple of days because I just don't write

2006-09-24T03:16:00.000-04:00

(written 13/9/2006)
I never write :(

Not entirely true, but mostly.

Some recent changes include city and state of residence, going to school for teaching certification, and pretending to own a home (sort of)

I think that taking classes has been really an eye-opener in a number of ways (i'll get to that). Not the least of which; I'm old(ish) I am not the same person that I was ten years ago; for that matter, yesterday.

----

much later now... I'm writing this in bits and pieces during the day (now late where I live)

-----

great. now it's 21st of sept. how annoying is that? i feel like i have no time, but the truth is, it's just that I'm lazy and museless. kinda fun typing for an audience of 0. :)
Or am I my own audience.

*yawn*

----

I have been having fun playing more Perl. It's a great way to be creative without having to rebuild/paint/deal with mistakes etc.. but i do miss drawing.. darnitall. oh. yes, dealing with mistakes is there, but not so painful since you can work with them and learn from them without too much suffering.

My wife is listening to music of various sorts while studying her CSS. All great fun.

Back to Perl. I've been playing with Perl SDL. (need to find links to SDL).
The following is an example of programming mediocrity. Still was fun to do.
Who cares that there are dozens of better ways to do this?



#!/usr/bin/perl
use diagnostics;
use strict;

use SDL::App;
use SDL::Rect;
use SDL::Color;
use SDL::Event;
use SDL::TTFont;

use Data::Dumper;#DEBUG
my $XSIZE = 76;
my $YSIZE = 105;

my %rule;



###rules---

# the values are modified in situ. return values are
# reserved for errorhandling



$rule{top} = sub{
my $needle = shift;
my $goal = shift;
my $top = 5; #dist from top of window.
if (($needle->{y} < ($top + 1)) and        ($needle->{v} <>{v} = 0;
}

return 0;  #for error handling.
};


$rule{bottom} = sub{
my $needle = shift;
my $goal = shift;

if (($needle->{y} > ($YSIZE-6)) and
    ($needle->{v} > 0)){
    $needle->{v} = 0;
}

return 0
};


$rule{brakes} = sub{
#put on the brakes when the needle passes it's goal.

my $needle = shift;
my $goal = shift;
my $goal = $YSIZE - $goal;
if (3 > abs($needle->{y} - $goal) ){
    #print "$goal   ", $needle->{y},"\n";#DEBUG
    $needle->{v} = ($needle->{v} / 1.1);

}

return 0
};

$rule{goal} = sub{
#move toward the level.

my $needle = shift;
my $goal = shift;


my $realgoal = $YSIZE - $goal;
if  (.3 <>{y} - $realgoal) ){
  if ($realgoal > $needle->{y}){
    $needle->{v}+= .1
  }

  if ($realgoal < $needle->{y}) {
    $needle->{v}-= .1
  }
}
# if (.3 > abs($needle->{y} - $realgoal) ){
#    $needle->{v} = $needle->{v} / 5;
#}
if ($needle->{v} > 30){$needle->{v} = 30};
if ($needle->{v} < -30){$needle->{v} = (-30)};

return 0
};

### END of rules.



my $needle;

$needle->{x}=3;
$needle->{y}=$YSIZE - 3;
$needle->{v}=0;

my $app = new SDL::App(
-title => 'Battery',
-width => $XSIZE,
-height => $YSIZE,
-depth => 32,
);

event_loop();

sub event_loop{
my $event = new SDL::Event;

 MAIN:
while (1){
    while ($event->poll){
        my $type = $event->type();
        last MAIN if ($type == SDL_QUIT);
        last MAIN if ($type == SDL_KEYDOWN
             && $event->key_name() eq 'escape');

    }


    $app->delay(5);
    draw($needle);
}
}





sub affect{
my $needle = shift;
my $rule = shift;
my $goal = shift;
$goal =~s/\%//;

for (keys(%{$rule})){
    $rule->{$_}->($needle,$goal);

}

$needle->{y}+=$needle->{v};
}











#---------------------------

{  #configuration and drawing data

#shared variables for this area::


my ($c_bg,$c0,$c1);

my ($numberfont,$numberfont_b,$numbersize,@numberpos);
my ($textfont,$textsize,@textpos);
my ($errorfont,$errorsize,@errorpos);
my ($titlefont,$titlesize,@titlepos);
my ($debugfont,$debugsize,@debugpos);
my ($data1,$data2);
my ($oldneedlex,$oldneedley);
my ($rect,$oldrect);
my ($debugtext);
my (@oldlines);


sub init_display{
 $debugtext = "debugging";

 $data2 = 'crap';
 @oldlines = ($data2,$data2,$data2,$data2);

 $c_bg = SDL::Color->new(
    -r => 0,
    -b => 0,
    -g => 0,
 );

 $c0 = SDL::Color->new(
    -r => 0x80,
    -b => 0x22,
    -g => 0x22,
 );

 $c1 = SDL::Color->new(
    -r => 0x50,
-b => 0xaa,
-g => 0xaa,
 );
 $oldrect = SDL::Rect->new(
    -width=>25,
    -height=>5,
    -x =>$needle->{x},
    -y =>$needle->{y},
);

 $numberfont =  new SDL::TTFont(
     -name=>"/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType/Vera.ttf",
-size=>8,
-bg=>$c_bg,
-fg=>$c0,
 );
  $numberfont_b =  new SDL::TTFont(
     -name=>"/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType/Vera.ttf",
-size=>8,
-bg=>$c_bg,
-fg=>$c_bg,
 );
 @numberpos = (5,40);

 $debugfont =  new SDL::TTFont(
     -name=>"/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType/Vera.ttf",
-size=>8,
-bg=>$c_bg,
-fg=>$c1,
 );
@debugpos = (20,20);

}

sub draw{
my $needle= shift;  
init_display unless (defined($c_bg));

chomp($data1 = `apm`);
my @datalines = splitapm($data1);

affect($needle,\%rule, $datalines[2]);

draw_rects();

if ($data1 ne $data2){
   $numberfont_b->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1],$oldlines[0]);
   $numberfont_b->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1]+10,$oldlines[2]);
   $numberfont_b->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1]+20,$oldlines[3]);
}
$data2 = $data1;
@oldlines = @datalines;

$app->grab_input(SDL_GRAB_OFF);
#$debugfont->print($app,$debugpos[0],$debugpos[1],$debugtext);
$numberfont->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1],$datalines[0]);
$numberfont->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1]+10,$datalines[2]);
$numberfont->print($app,$numberpos[0]+35,$numberpos[1]+20,$datalines[3]);



 $app->sync();
}

sub draw_rects {

$rect = SDL::Rect->new(
    -width=>25,
    -height=>3,
    -x =>$needle->{x},
    -y =>$needle->{y},
);





$app->fill($oldrect,$c_bg);
$app->fill($rect,$c1);
$app->update($oldrect);
$app->update($rect);

$oldrect = $rect;

}






}



sub splitapm{
my $data = shift;

$data =~ /(.*?)\,.*?(\w+?)\:\s(\d+\%).*?\((.*)\)/;

my @array = ($1,$2,$3,$4);

@array
}

What the fsck?

2006-07-13T18:33:00.000-04:00

Last night I tried to make a post for this weblog for the first time in a long time. I ended up getting a lesson in how to use e2fsck when the filesystem went kapluee. Well, I haven't had trouble like this since the time when I didn't know about shutdown -h now.

Thankfully, a little reading of manpages set me right and here is a post- a post about a post that was never made . *sigh*

Cafe III

2005-02-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

Jazz is playing in the restaurant next door. There is a two drink minimum to enjoy the show directly, but the playing is loud enough to really enjoy it here in the cafe.

Tonight there are three behind the counter. at least two are different from last night. There's a pattern here: two men and one woman mind the shop. Currently there are six patrons plus one who walked in, greeting a pair of men sitting near the brick wall next to the counter.

The establishment itself is on the South East corner of Fifth and Brown Streets; running East West and North South respectively. Its face apears to face the main drag (Fifth Street) although the entrance faces the streetcorner.

There are two small couches in the room: one set against the brick wall and one almost directly opposite taking up the width of a broad wall outcropping which supports the wireless internet tranciever and a security cameral facing the door. That camera looks surprisingly flimsy and may be a prop with a blinking light.

A couple who were sitting in the middle of the room just left. Neither was dressed for the weather. She wore a light green sweater nearly the same shade as the the walls while he wore a tan light jacket. Now situated on a barstool facing Fifth St. is a woman reading and perhaps writing. She sips at a hot drink with whipped cream on top. Her hair's a little messy; perhaps due to the cold and breazy weather. The outside tempurature is about 24 degrees farenheit.

The three characters sitting by the brick wall are all wearing dark clothes. One just asked another if he were homeless. This was partly in jest but the tone
was half serious. The discussion turns to somewhat personal matters of friends and situations. The oldest man seems to be in his late thirties or early fourties and is the one explaining himself to the others.

Time's running out for tonight, but the place seems alive anyway. With the live music next door (there is a conecting hallway between the two establishments) and more lights turned on within the store the place doesn't seem as sleepy as it did the two nights past.

Cafe II

2005-02-16T21:39:00.000-05:00

The door's closed today as the weather is less hospitable than yesterday. The spirit of the place is far more exhuberant due to the dialogues of four people discussing sex, prostitution, and the Norman influences on English in its evolution towards its modern form.

Two said people have left and the boistrous atmosphere isn't. Now it appears that the remainding two are leaving.

The noise and mayhem of a few minutes ago are now quite gone. Most of that conversation was certainly interesting but not captured.

The entrance to the establishment is cut into the corner of the building, making the rooms seem larger at first. Facing the main drag (and to the left as you enter) is a row of bar stool arrangements split by faux stucco structural supports. The centre support and the bars themselves are skewed. The bars are elongated triagles pointing to the right with quarter-inch thick sheets of metel bifurcating them; same shape, pointing down.

A nasty laud clanging of metel and maybe ceramic just crashed in the "kitchen" just behind the counter.

Returning to the bar-stools: they are apolstered with backs; not wholely uncomfortable.

A slightly mussed waiter/busboy just popped in wearing a slightly puffy black hat, white shirt (untucked and well used), black apron, and pants. He evidently knows the establishment well and it seems to know him. It took him moments to rush in, wave hello, grab a paper, and rush out again.

While the place isn't full off people, the turnover is fairly constant and to fast to record.

It looks like one of the boistrous couples popped in agian, the woman using the restroom and the both of them leaving as quickly as the waiter had five minutes ago.

Three people in the cafe now, one hour until closing. All three are at laptop computers- one Apple, one Mocrosoft machine and one Knoppix. It's become suddenly lonely. Correction, there are two women who waked in to order some drink (food is no longer served this late unless you want pastries).

One has a pink croshet hat that covers what apears to be pulled up hair. The rest of her pallet is light blue shirt and crochet purse with dark blue jacket and jeans. Her compatriot wears no hat with lighter coloured blue jeans and what looks to be a reddish brown cordoroy jacket.

This time a man walked into the cafe, talking on his cellphone. What's interesting about him is that his right hand is shaking while holding the phone up to his ear. Perhaps the denim jacket isn't enough to keep out the cold.

There's not much time left until the store closes and the fellows behind the counter are laughing with the fellow with the shaky hands. Correction, a woman has appeared behind the counter wearing a black cap; felt with a two inch brim.

The surfaces in the cafe vary wildly from wall to wall and section to section. Brick stands to the right of the counter with moltled sand coloured tiles behind it, giving the serving area the atmosphere of a bathroom. The walls in the "back" of the store (left of the counter) of colours that look vaguely like the innerds of avacados.

In about a quarter hour, the store closes.

last night at a nice cafe (circa 9pm eastern standard time) mailed to my wife:::

2005-02-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

there are a couple women knitting shawls and a guy reading the dayton voice on the couch across the room. there's what apears to be a couple at the window (on tall chairs) each with a laptop and the fellow nibbling on a late dinner. there are more people walking in, but the atmosphere remains cozy even though the front door is open to let in the evening air.

Rocks make definite criticisms.

2005-01-30T11:37:00.000-05:00

Ten past Eleven in the morning

Happy Birthday to my wife!!!!

This morning she woke up to something on the bedstand wrapped in tissue......

A new and wonderful translation of Don Quixote- by Edith Grossman! Last year at this time it was published in hardcover form. She saw it on the bookshelf and thought that it gets the peotic sense of the original well. I couldn't resist *grin*.

Yesterday, as a birthday prelude and something everyone should do anyway, we went and saw an exhibition of Petra ruins at the Cincinnati Arts Museum. The work done in that city is/was phenominal; much of it surprisingly practical.

Well, my happy better half is talking to her family; describing to them the weekend etc. She mentioned to them and reminded me of the funny idiosicracies of the critic who wrote the forward to This particular Don Quixote, Harold Bloom. Namely that he seems overly fond of the play Hamlet. Strange- but looking at the Wikipedea entry, Hamlet is barely mentioned. I'd suggest that this would mean that my wife's mistaken, but for the repitition of Hamlet references throughout the introduction to Don Quixote for comparison.

I shouldn't worry oo much, the book itself is wonderful and will finally give me the chance to read it (in spanish in the future).

I need to sleep more and stay at work less :P and sit down and think more often. The household has been full of colds lately and this has made life a bit more challenging- thank the gods for pre-prepared foods!! Canned soupe is a godsend!!!!!

*yawn* *cough*

No Audio? solo... no se

2004-12-31T18:38:00.000-05:00

Wanting to upload? well-- will see.. *sigh* enclosures needed.

2004-12-30T00:35:00.000-05:00

Pink Hair and piercings.

2004-12-27T14:25:00.000-05:00

mixes.
beatles.

fops.

learn enclosures... bah- lots of snow and minimal holiday :P

*sigh*

Mis Ojos me duelen :P

2004-10-17T01:45:00.000-04:00

Porque la dia es mas tarde/temprano.... estoy muy cansado.

i want to go to bed- but i really don't. my wife just told me that she's going to bed.

...

now sometime later and i'm still up :P silly me. it's really too late for me to make much of this post. I really should get some rest.

2004-09-16T17:07:00.000-04:00

Tired. Need sleep.... miss wife..

*yawn*
buenas noches.....

:

e^2

2004-09-16T16:05:00.000-04:00

Solved!!! The second puzzle is solved and I feel good :)

I have to give credit to my father who noticed something and mentioned it to me. His mention kept my head pointed in the right direction. - not going to say!!

{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com

:) you have to solve this first to get to the second!! don't look up the answer! Solve it!!!

e

2004-09-16T09:59:00.000-04:00

Woohoo!!!

Got it!!!

http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/07/warning-we-brake-for-number-theory.html

It wasn’t that figuring out how to solve it was too difficult- it was just getting the job done that caused me to tear my hair out a bit. It’s the really really really big numbers that get you. here’s e to the nth place ::

2.71828182845904523536028747135266249775724
7093699959574966967627724076630353547594571
3821785251664274274663919320030599218174135
9662904357290033429526059563073802518820503
5196742472332465361446638770681338835343003
4139974174573454428990064205056256412883731
4486625718121816955883967531951527793838410
1062576645231282166052390983951551299694776
3023165855070702535657881114373508798119492
9233692894922188035324152322634198156645140
6950047196003708315752531447274695337642218
5585970490727919479183987903732774852033585
71021151276932683987895

And it goes on and on and on- nasty!!

I heard this all the other day on NPR when trying to wake up and get out of bed :P the website refreshed my memory and I set down to it.... The answer brought me to another page which puzzle is puzzling- at least with e you have something to work with...

Actually, I’m not a math person, I’m an English major person... so I had to figure out what e was in the first place... I found this page to be the best for me :) because it spelled things out without using mathmatical shourthand- the funny symbols are useful, but not until one is comfortable reading them.

anyway.. *big grin* I’m happy!

oh- yea--i still have to solve the second puzzle... oh heck!!

fatigue

2004-09-12T18:52:00.000-04:00

Suffering from a little writing fatigue and log confusion. "Logfatigue"? One weblog, one personal page/partial log, and one dead tree log. The dead tree version was the first. It started in concert with my wife's purchase of a new book to write in. I followed suite to see how I would fare trying to record everyday events.

It turns out that I have really had fun with the dead tree version. One very pleasant side effect is the fact tat I have a far better memory assisted than not. Side note: my memory is poor. Compared to my wife's, I have practically no memory whatsoever- at least when it comes to the detailed recollection of events. In addition, she is able to spin a story out of almost any event- even small ones- with details and asides that make it allvery interesting. In contrast, I tend to tell a small peice of the story without embellishment or even much basic detail. What is a page of interesting narrative from my wife becomes two bland sentences from me. I think that's partly why I joined her in writing a dead tree journal. I wanted (want) to tell an interesting story too- even if it's to no one but myself.

Anyway, we have not only the hand written log, but the blogspot one- a natural continuation. But I don't have the time- strike that, don't have the patience to sit down and compose. I also don't have the story to tell. Maybe I should say that I don't have a story that I feel I want to tell. Then again, the same lack of detailing that suffer from "telling" stories seems to afflict me while writing them.

To continue... I also have my webpage on a friends server. It's the least interesting from a narritive point of view bacause I don't particularly feel like blowing hot air at people I know- I'd rather waste the time of strangers.
I'm only half joking- it's easier to spout what might be nonsense or partly sensical material to strangers than it is to speak up near those whome you know- well, that's only partly true. In this case, the spoken word tends to be a bit easier than the written word. Maybe I don't wan to risk sounding pompous when I write something- there's a lot of that and I'm not sure how to tell if and when I'm doing that.
Anyway... the page also serves as a learning place for programattic web development and as a repository for notes and ideas that I'm trying to learn about.

What ever the reasons are, I have three outlets: dead trees, blogspot, page. The last two are a little vain in nature. The last is the most difficult to use because it's the least anonymous. These three outlets are sometimes a little too much- I'd like to be able to keep all these things organized and centralized, but I can't- considering the different reasons for being that each outlet has.

I'm envious of my wife's narritive skills/talent, but I'm also pretty darn envious of her sharing. In the last entry that I've read of her'(from august 3rd(last one of her's as of this writing)) she articulates her strong emotional reactions to the condition of my grandfather; something which I have not been able to do- or I should say have not wanted to do. It's not the kind of thing I'm interested in sharing. Yet, I do wish I had either the skill or the desire to do what she does.

What I can do, if I put my mind to it, is explain something or give an idea. Unfortunately, I don't tend to add an emotive element to it, so I end up sounding like an old fuddy-duddy professor in tweed writing on the blackboard in front of a disinterested audience. Where's the excitement in that? Where's the magic umph that gets a person to think? Well, it'still fun to do this, but it kinda sucks, the limitations.... phooy.

what a riot

2004-08-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

On a current events front, a Slashdot story caught my eye today.. actually, I first noticed this yesterday on The Register. This poor woman at Katie.com has had to suffer from the (irony of all ironies (if i'm using the term right)) the abuse of her domain by the choice of titles for a book written by a child who'd suffered abuse as a child.

I'll leave it to you to follow up and try to figure out what's going on. Suffice it to say that I'm not impressed with Penguin books.

twin blogs

2004-08-06T10:10:00.000-04:00

Now I have a seperate log on my home page at http://www.hackswell.com/corenth/.

This new log is a mirrow of this one- except that it is sanitized for those who
know me personally- well, mostely family. in case i want to really rant here, i won't there. :)

the other site may become more and more my

main

site, but who knows..

now, on to copying my most recent posts:::

6th August 2004
10:00 AM
A big woohoo is in order :)
Well, maybe a small one at least. Locked down my sorting files for my general index.

open OUT, "> $s_file";
flock(OUT,LOCK_EX);
print OUT $i; #new position in index
$index->[$i] = $sort_vals{$sort}; # page directory
$i++;
flock(OUT,LOCK_UN);
close OUT;

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5th August 2004
The new home page system is now up and running- not fully functional yet :)
I have to write code to allow easier traversal of pages. I am thinking about using this for the other pages on this site- it may be easier to work with the Photopage if i rewrite it with this code. It uses the URI data to pass parametres around. however, since i use URI data to go to different pages in the first place, it's taken me a little time to decide how to make this work. well, it works... when i get around to it, i'll post some code.
:)

coding again...

2004-07-30T17:11:00.000-04:00

Perl or any language really, just beats me over the head.. I've been working on an auto-indexing routine for internal link on my personal webpage, and have ended up with something rather ugly- it works, but it's ugly. The big problem is the fact that i have so much trouble seeing the big picture when it comes to this sort of work/play. For instance,


my $i = 0;       

foreach my $sort (sort(keys(%sort_vals))){               

     my $s_file = $path . $sort_vals{$sort} . '/sort';               

     open OUT, "< $s_file";               

     print OUT $i; #new position in index               

     $index->[$i] = $sort_vals{$sort}; # page directory

     $i++;               

     close OUT;      

}

just confuses the heck out of me- even when it's in context- and i wrote it! It's not just the uglyness of the code either, even when i'm extra careful to keep things readable and consistant i have this trouble. The problem isn't that the code is or is not confusing and badly commented, but that I am nearly incapable of keeping code as a whole in perspective- so I end up losing a sense of the problem i'm working on in the first place.

enough complaining. I still can't stop myself from hacking - i may be entirely incompetent, but I just can't stop.

cat ~/*cat

2004-07-18T20:22:00.000-04:00

This is a surprise. Since my last post, the editor for blogspot has changed. Pleasent surprised.

Well, I've been busy coding and watching etc. saw Farenheit 9/11 with my wife some time ago and decided that while it's not the cleanest method, it is powerful in its indictment of the bush administration.

Five is the name of our cat. My wife named her :) She was found all skin and bones- a sad sad case. We've taken her to the vet several times and still have to do so to get the poor girl spayed. She's currently in heat for the second time in three weeks. Poor poor girl...

That'll do for now.

Grain of Fear

2004-06-18T21:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since my last post. A lot has happened in the entervening period.

My wife is finished with her current CCNA course.
Got to go to King's Island :)
I'm 31 years old!!! :P

What else?

I wish I had the time and patience to tell you the saga of my grandfathers dog and some skunks *laugh*.

I want to point to an article by Richard Florida. I saw this in tmtm.blogspot.com.

It is this kind of painful devolution which scares me when I see the current president of the united states.

UF!!!

2004-06-06T00:37:00.000-04:00

Ulner nerve. Is that my problem? Typing with me arms out straight like I am at this moment feels strange.

I went to google and looked up carpel tunnel syndrome and read that repetitive stress injuries come in all sorts.

You see, I have noticed my ring finger on my right hand botherme on occasion in the past. I've noticed that I've had problems withsitting cross legged on the ground -> my left foot likes to go to sleep.

On Friday the 4th of June (yesterday at the time I'm writing this) I was typing data into a database at work.

I never finished it because my right hand steadily became unusable. A few minutes ago, I went over to one of the computers here in the library (studying with my wife) and looked this up (just noticed that I'm repeating myself from above).

My problem closely matches the symptomes of Cubital Tunnel Syndrome- this refers to a nerve that passes through a 'tunnel' in bone and often gets conpressed and stretched (read 'really badly stressed') at the elbow. Looked this up- it's interesting and worries me quite a bit.

Damn, my right ring finger is just giving me fits. I don't know if this is the real problem, but it may well be. If so, then I am doing just what I need to do.

My wife just had an epiphany regarding Cisco. In studying all of these network routing things (firewall rules i think) she realized that for clear understanding of what's going on, she must see it all in binary. Decimal numbers cover the truth.

She said she wants to by that shirt that says

There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand this shirt and those who don't.

It's really neat to watch another person suddenly have a little "aha" moment :) always feels good to see that!

btw- my ring figer still bothers me, but I feel better over all- I'm not sure if this is a psychosomatic response or a real theropuetic response to my controlling my elbow positioning.

Well, this is a posting much later than the above parts- will post about the film my wife and I say tonight.

Study today, play someday.

2004-05-29T18:36:00.000-04:00

Today has been good. My wife is now taking an online Cisco test for her class. I'm writing for the audience (you- who?). We were at a local university for some quiet studytime earlier today. I got to refine my WEB::Willy module and related server. It all works like a charm.

It's seperated into three parts:

The thing that made it easier for me to do this is the '?' notation... in a url like
< a href="http://mypage.foo.cl?faq"> FAQ</a> the '?faq' part can be used by the server to let it make decisions.

So, there you have it... when I have more patience I'll try a better description of it all.

Yesterday was a good day as I went with my wife to run around a bit. You see, while in the car, we heard some wonderful news: Augusto Pinochet, the son of a bitch (I sincerely apologize to his mother for saying that), may lose his immunity from prosecution. An apellet court in Chile ruled on the point. Now, this is not yet over- not only must there be a trial, but this ruling will be vigourously apealed. Whatever the case, there is hope.

Pinochet is the asshole who wreaked havoc on my wife's country for 17 years, helped along by both corporate and U.S. government interests.

It's a pleasent thing to see a little justice in the world; or at least hope for it.

Blast it!

2004-05-28T14:52:00.000-04:00

Last night, I was tidying up the bugs in WEB::Willy when I shut down my computer to go home. You see, my wife and I were at a bookstore studying while a thunderstorm (with some hail) pounded the world outside. (exciting) Later that night, I started the machine again to finish up- well, I am not sure how I did it, but I must have forgotten to exit vi when I shut down before- so I Restored a prior session after having done a great deal of work ... *sigh*. But I'm not at
all bothered now- I've learnt alot and have it in mind to make it even better :)

just remenber....

At least I hope that's right...

Long Long Long

2004-05-27T15:59:00.000-04:00

The day never ends. My wife's day never ends. No end.
I'm silly to say that, but it's such a long day.

gaa!

:P

Further notes.

2004-05-27T14:51:00.000-04:00

Thinking to myself::

Maybe I should seperate Control into a pmodule... use WEB::Control;

The problem is that Indexes are code intensive the way I'm doing things..

sub control{

}

sub index{

}

Well, I've got little time left on this break..

ttfn.

Small bit happy

2004-05-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

It’s been a bit since I last posted. Currently I’m trying to split time between work, sleep, work, code, and sundry others.

I’ve made good progress on the simple templating code...

sub control {

}

looks like $location is used, but the truth is that control() only assigns strings to %state. i’d initialy had control() modify the page, but now it’s relegated to assigning these strings.

template(); holds the form and tags.

control(); links stuff to tags in the template.
generate_content(); substitutes these strings for the tags in the template- the cool
thing is that this substitution will execute the code in the strings.
This way the good stuff will be plastered straight into the page :)

A separate package will hold the routines that either feed files into the page or creates parts of the page.

simplepage.pl

2004-05-24T14:48:00.000-04:00

Here is the basic version of a simple templating and non-messy Web page
script.

HTML is bloody messy.... allways messy- It's my pet peeve I guess..


#!/usr/bin/perl



use warnings;

use strict;

# this is a proof of concept test designed to

#       find out whether or not I can use POE and HTTP::Response

#       to make a fully dynamic webpage with minimal messyness and

#       uglyness.



#       the modeling will be at three levels:

#               Structure

#               Data

#               Control







use POE qw(Component::Server::TCP Filter::HTTPD);

use HTTP::Response;



use constant BindAddress => '127.0.0.1';

use constant BindPort => '8087';

use constant Filter => 'POE::Filter::HTTPD';





sub server{



        my $alias = shift;

        my $port = shift;



    POE::Component::Server::TCP->new

        (Port           => $port,

         Alias          => $alias,

         ClientInput    => \&handle_client_input,

#  Error          => \&error_handler,

  ClientFilter   => Filter,



#  InlineStates   => {

#               req     =>   \&make_request,

#        }

 );

}



sub handle_client_input{

        # get link data from remote connection.

 # call functions to parse link and change control structures.

 # cycle output.



 my ($kernel, $heap, $request) =

                @_[ KERNEL, HEAP, ARG0 ];



# Filter::HTTPD sometimes generates HTTP::Response objects.

# They indicate (and contain the response for) errors that occur

# while parsing the client's HTTP request.  It's easiest to send

# the responses as they are and finish up.

# (This if statement - including comments are cribbed from poe.perl.org)



 if ( $request->isa("HTTP::Response") ) {

                $heap->{client}->put($request);

                $kernel->yield("shutdown");

                return;

        }





        my $response = HTTP::Response->new(200);

        my $session = control_data($request->{_uri});

        my $stuff = make_template();

           $stuff = generate_content($stuff,$session);

        $response->push_header( 'Conten-type', 'test/html' );

        $response->content($stuff);



        $heap->{client}->put($response);

        $kernel->yield("shutdown");



        #control_data() changes the $control data structure to reflect the

 #choices made by the client.  this data structure will indicate what

 #data will be presented later on by the server to the client.



 #make_template() gives $stuff all the structure junk...  $stuff

 # is just a string full of tags and things for later routines to

 #fill in with "stuff"



 #generate_content() will stick the "stuff" in stuff based on the

 #control structure ($session).  special tags put in the $stuff $string

 #will be substituted with "stuff" fron this routine.

 #e.g   $stuff=~ s/\[\% title \%\]/$session->{title}/;

 # or

 # $stuff =~ s/\[\%(w*?)\%\]/$session->{$1}/;

 #which takes away a tag like "[%Title%]" and

 #replaces it with the contents of $session->{Title}.





 #just read a bit about template toolkit *laugh* go figure..





}



sub control_data{

        # control_data() changes the $control data structure to reflect the

 # choices made by the client.  this data structure will indicate what

 # data will be presented later on by the server to the client.



 # control data recieves $request->{_uri} (see documentation for

 # HTTP::Response) and uses it to create (in future modify)

 # the %control datastructure which it then returns.

 # the hash %control will contain things like the page title,

 # lists of links, and files/locations from which to grab data.

 my $input=shift;

        my $control;



        $control->{Title}='Test Title';

        $control->{Index}='Test Index<b><a href=';

        $control->{Index}.='"nothing.html">Nothing!</a>';

        $control->{Body}='The Body!!<p></p>The Body!!!!!';

        $control->{Footer}="$input";

        return $control;

}



sub make_template{

        #make_template() returns all the structure junk...  $crap

 #is just a string full of tags and things for later routines to

 #fill in with "stuff"



 my $crap;



        $crap = '<html><body>';

        $crap .='<table><tr>'.

                '<td>'.

                '%%Index%%'.

                '</td>'.

                '<td>'.

                '%%Body%%'.

                '</td>'.

                '<td>'.

                '%%Index%%'.

                '</td>'.

                '</tr></table>'.

                'That\'s that<br></br>'.

                '%%Footer%%'.

                '</body></html>';

        return $crap;

}





sub generate_content{



        my $stuff = shift;

        my $session = shift;



        #generate_content() will stick the "stuff" in $stuff based on the

 #control structure ($session).  special tags put in the $stuff string

 #will be substituted with "stuff" from this routine.

 #e.g   $stuff=~ s/\[\% title \%\]/$session->{title}/;

 # or

 # $stuff =~ s/\[\%(w*?)\%\]/$session->{$1}/g;

 #which takes away a tag like "[%Title%]" and

 #replaces it with the contents of $session->{Title}.





 #just read a bit about template toolkit *laugh* go figure..



 #currently this routine does not include data from outside

 #files.. this must change quickly.

 $stuff =~ s/%%(\w+?)%%/$session->{$1}/g;

        print "and stuff is $stuff\n";

        return $stuff;

}

server('debug',BindPort);

$poe_kernel->run();

Testosterone

2004-05-22T11:21:00.000-04:00

Just read my wife's post on testosterone. I think I understand the desire behind that suggestion, but, so often, the panacea we think we've found isn't.

Darn it! Too much coffee- I allways feel it after coming back from the Golden Nugget- gaa!!! Why is it so good!?!??!!?!?!?!?!? It's evil!

Information environmentalism?

2004-05-22T11:06:00.000-04:00

What the heck??!? We are listening to the radio to a programme called Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the mentioned in the introduction about information environmentalism - going to have to look this one up. Seems to be a movement to get rid of some of the excess information pollution in the world, or some such.

My wife has just posted a really really long post on her log. I'll have to read it when I get an hour or so to digest its contents- we had been eating breakfast at The Golden Nugget this morning (best coffee in the known universe) and were discussing the evils and goods of testosterone. Her post is about that...

In other news, SCO is still being mean and our heroes at Groklaw are exposing the company for the mean company it is :P

So there!

Suburbia: Land of the Walking Dead

2004-05-22T10:47:00.000-04:00

Part 1.

Ghostly sport utility vehicles,
With tiny women peeking over the steering wheel,
Creeping down an empty street,
In a neighbourhood with nothing but televisions,
In identicle houses.

I think there's a song in here somewhere.
Face it, suburban living is a kind of living dead existance- or it can be at anyrate. If you know your neighbours and there're things going on all aroung it might be fine. The problem is that many of these are "bedroom communities". That name says something. It says that where you live is not important. Sleeping is a communal event?? What the hell is that except a kind of mass dysfunction?

It's just plain sad.

More on this later.

Untangling a web.

2004-05-20T23:01:00.000-04:00

This is a working draft of a web design process. Trying to reduce the ugly nature of html, *ml &c code. The likely use of CGI.pm and Template::Toolkit amoung other things should help keep the damage done by html code to a minimum.

The main point of this particular process is to modularize the document peices sufficiently enough to make editing a fairly simple process and to increase the scalability of a particular page or set of pages.

Parts:

The control structure will be fairly tightly coupled with the template structure, but that's not a terrible PitA.

Ex. of a control structure::

The first line has the name of a file (presumably a snippet oftext with html code in it) to by inserted by some Perl programinto the webpage that will be made when it's requested.

The second line might act as the first and give the location of a file, or it could contain the document itself for all I know.

The third line is the same as the first, but I figured I'd play with thinking of it like an html document.

The fourth and last line is a bit different; a reference to a subroutine which contains what needs to be done. This might even be nothing more than a further abstraction layer between the final html and the editing process. While it looks interesting, I think that it's likely to be a little redundant.

Ex. Of things made easier- change display/clickability of link to same page using the $state control structure to control it..

for instance::

Now, the above code isn't quite right, but it's a good start. It would really end up being a little more complex- something that says

If the link has the same string of information that is used to represent the current page, then we shouldn't display the link.

Yes, I rather like that.

Now, there must be an effort to keep the code as loosely coupled with the data as possible. The above snippet might not do that so well unless I am extreamly careful.

So we end up with three layers for a webpage this way.
Form
Data
Control

Now, I remember that there is another model for doing this... some
three letter acronym... Model is one of the words in it, but I can't
remember what the whole thing is.

OK, trying a differnt way to say it::

1. run response.
2. click internal link.
3. this runs a codref? to change values in $state.
4. run response.

continue....

Not a bad way to do things, but I have to be sure that changes
to pages isn't going to be too difficult.

Duck Duck Goose.

2004-05-19T23:38:00.000-04:00

Today my wife and I were out walking in a park near our
apartment. We enjoyed watching some mallard families enjoying the evening sun and nibbling on whatever it is they nibble. It was a good evening and a good walk.

However, we witnessed something pretty horrible. Two seemingly stereotypical suburbanites (husband and wife maybe?) were walking there small white dog (shaggy haired fellow) accross a street (not a busy one- it's within the park I think) from us. We came upon them first noticing the dog. It was chasing a couple of mallard ducks; a female and a male. We came to realize that the suburbanite couple was encouraging the dog to give chase.

I later commented to my wife that I'd have expected that behaviour from children or teenagers, not older folk. This couple looked to be in their fifties.

Now, while this was going on, we were in a bit of a state of shock seeing this, and were very worried when we saw the female mallard start limping in the street. We quickly realized that she was only playing at being wounded to entice the dog away from what turned out to be her brood of chicks.

That was unbelievable; impossible for me to understand how anyone could be so cruel. I think that I would like to have yelled at the assholes (I apologize for me language). My wife thought a good hard kick to the dog would be apropiate, but I think the owners are the ones with the intellegence to make a moral choice like that, so they are the ones to be kicked.

Well, my wife tells me that she 'hates' them (small dogs)- she has her prejudices I suppose *grin*. I don't blame her!!!!

My wife and I are typing away at this stuff, downloading the latest release of the Mozilla browser and making new blog stuff- she just told me that she's changing the title of her weblog to "Groundhog Day" - which makes sense because she often will liken her current situation to the repititious life of Bill Murry's character in the film "Groundhog Day". If you read her blog, you will note a certain lack of satisfaction in the "Suburban Midwestern Lifestyle(TM)". I make an understatement.

Thank you.

Radio, blogosphere, meme, zeitgeist

2004-05-16T19:45:00.000-04:00

Damn. Lost my entire post due to bad pointing and clicking.

I had a nice and tidy discussion on social environments etc...

Meme

Zeitgeist

I am not terribly happy about this situation. Most annoying.

Anyway, my wife is plugging away at her CISCO tests... playing with router emulators and neat stuff like that.

Well, I was wondering about what Harry Shearer mentioned on his weekly radioshow Le Show about what had happened to Nicholas Berg recently and the resultant commentary in the "blogoshpere" (he used a term like "blogsphere" instead- but who's counting?). He said that the reluctance to show what had happened to completion opened the door for speculation and conspiracy theories about the veracity of what was reported... I am studiously avoiding really talking about it because it makes be to damn uncomfortable. Notice all this linguistic twisting and turning to avoid it all... but what he said was interesting.

Many(some?) bloggers have been strongly skeptical about the reports and suggest that the footage was faked... well, that's the impression that I'm getting from Le Show. I haven't tried looking this stuff up myself and don't particularly want to.

This got me to thinking, what about our collective sense of things? Does the 'blogosphere' contain its own memes and zeitgeist, or does it reflect the senses of a wider community or society?

If you are unable to see, then the image is not very useful to you, but what I'm thinking may still be interesting. Now, the image depicts a piece of the social fabric that I deal with in a very simplified form. After twiddling with it, I've given-up being accurate to any degree. However, the idea is to make it a little easier to figure out my own question and answers to it.

Again: Does the 'blogosphere' contain its own memes and zeitgeist, or does it reflect the senses of a wider community or society?

In my current state, I'm inclined toward the latter. While there is an awful lot of incestuous interlinking of weblogs and topics, the people themselves appear to have enough social influences from beyond weblogs to make the logs themselves secondary influences- at most reinforcing previouse positions and/or preferences etc.

I think that my attempt at a graphical reference for this question illustrates this. Most people deal with more than one facet of life. We have home, work, school, family, love, politics, religion, friends of various sorts, etc.etc.etc.etc.etc... on and on and on.. what the graph doesn't show is how much variety that many people have in their relationships... it only shows that "some professionals make web pages and blogs" and "some bloggers make webpages" etc.

I'm not saying that there are no 'blog memes' but, I think they are probably less strong than some might think; especialy those in the middle of said memes.

But then memes are out there. In the wider community, "computers" are a meme that's nearly universal- "computers are good" vs. "computers and bad" etc....

Here's a meme maker- Slashdot. And here's one that's really starting to effect computers and the law Groklaw.

I'm tired and I don't feel like posting any more :P

good night!

Going to Dave&Buster's tonight.

2004-05-15T22:29:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! Going to go play video games and all that stuff over
at this neat arcade place - pool tables and other stuff are there too.

Now, this isn't necessarily the most unbelievable place in the world, but it is great fun to play there.... very very very silly place.

^_^

Going out.

2004-05-15T00:23:00.000-04:00

We didn't. Were going to go to a big grown-up arcade place, but
got all lazy and watched television! I can't believe that we wached tv.

Our normal routine is to do other things; not watching television.
But that's life. It's late night and we are both winding down. It's around 12:30
in the morning.... I think bedtime should be rolling around shortly.

Food.

2004-05-14T20:25:00.000-04:00

Dinner was at a restaurant. A restaurant? A restaurant.
Chinese buffet. My wife and I sat, talked, and slowly ate several dishes. We had hot tea and used chopsticks. Food is too easy here. Walking is too hard here. I'm too darn tired to
keep writing right now :P

Cicada.

2004-05-14T15:49:00.000-04:00

Cicadas are coming. Listening to Talk of the Nation“ science friday”. They’re talking about the emergence of 17year Cicadas :)

Look at Cicada Mania for more information.

This place has links for cicada recipies- tast like popcorn?

btw- today’s daily emergence update : washingtom DC, baltimor... etc.... (listening to the guy who made this site talking on the above radio show).

My wondeful wife is not an insect lover, but I find this facinating!

.

:)

identify and read...

2004-05-14T14:52:00.001-04:00

Reading posts of other weblogs is very pleasent. I've found
this place full
of profanity and ranting and raving etc. Very enjoyable.

What is the desire for looking into others' lives doing stuck
in our brains? I mean, look at the recent proliferation of the
so called "reality show". It's disturbing to me, but sometimes the
idea's interesting. One of the common fetishes that populates
pornographic websites seems to be voyerism-> the idea that you
are sneaking a peek at someone's private life. Is that so different
from "The Real World"?

I read these weblogs, some have audio from the authors. The one above
has some very funny (to me) audio clips talking about semi-random
things.

I'm listening to his most recent audio post about listening Rush
Limbaugh (US based conservative pundit) and making fun of him *grin*.

well, time to go back to work.
.
.
.
.
.
.

small.

2004-05-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

Short post....
Little time.

Friday,nearly ten o'clock in the morning.
I want to rest, but not able to now.

I need a nap. No, I need a chance to think
and play: far better than a nap!

poetic segue

2004-05-13T21:01:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting here with my partly working laptop
(in my lap- go figure (ergonomical nightmare?)) typing
a bit for you(who?). It's a bit past 6 pm localtime.

This might be considered an extension of my last post.
As such I'll try to continue my thoughts. There's
a bit of a problem... I can't see my last post!
Well, I'll just have to use my faulty memory to figure
this all out :)

a butterfly
in front and back
of a woman's path

--- chiyo ni

I hope I got that name right- I typed it from memory,
though it's not much to remember is it?

It's a translation (not done by me!!) of a haiku by
a famouse female poet from many years ago- if I recall,
she came one generation after basho??? Basho is a very
famous poet. To many things to say about these things
and too little that I can say due mostly to my ignorance.

Let's not worry about that. Let's just look at the poem
itself.

A question:

Why is it a poem?

I'm willing to bet that the answer is a little difficult to
find since it is a translation from Japanese to English.

Of course the answer is allways difficult when it's about the
human condition- all creative things are about the human condition.

Go figure.

Here is one way to look at it:

a butterfly
in front and back
of a woman's path

Don't worry about syllable counts and that stuff,
just worry about the stuff inside.

I'm

Now, here is how I look at the question:

Does that sound silly? It's not silly to me.

A story that's just a story tells a tale.

A poem can tell that tale, but instead of
describing things, it uses words with
meaning suffused through them.

a butterfly
in front and back
of a woman's path

five important words :butterfly
front back woman path.

front and back are really together... that makes
four words.

Four words that say what a woman is and what
life is and the nature of these things. (i think)
It took me longer to summerize the poem than it
took the poem to explain itself!!!

What does that say? It says that poetry
communicates one hell of a lot of meaning
in a small space. Granted, a lot of this
is dependent on culture, but it still works.

What am I getting at? Well, I'm talking about
writing programs.

save($pages[$_]) if $pages[$_]=~/^\s*?\d{1,3}/;

What the heck does that mean?

It means that we are looking at the pages of a book.
We are saving all the pages that have page numbers at
the top of the book.

The truth is, I'm not sure that that's working code.. but it's
good for my thoughts on the subject.

The information is compressed into a small
space and presented in a tight little bundle.

Is this poetry? Well, I suppose it's not exactly, but it
does carry some of the weight: it's expressive material
which lets its information out to the reader who has
the cultural background to understand it.

But what about going beyond the superficial? What
about creativity and meaning? Well the latter is harder
to argue, but the former is definitely there!

Solving any problem takes creativity- as children we
are all creative in our shinanigans and eaqually creative
in our excuses when we get caught.

the above poem- I mean snippet of code was pounded out
at the spur of the moment, much like haiku and senryu have
been in the past: creative processes. Moving stanzas around isn't just to
make a program work right, but to make it read right.

A program should be easy on the eyes, it's structures pleasant
and flowing. The words and phrases should lead you through
the desires of the programmer.

Does this sound like poetry?

Well, this creative endevour is what makes me enjoy writing
programs. It's solving problems and getting past challenges, but
it's also making something that I can call beautiful.

That's my argument today. Programming is (like?) poetry.

I should make a little confession. While I've taken this
metaphore to heart, it's not mine originally. It's something
that others have brought up before me.
The Perlmonks website has had at least one thread on the subject, and
I found a neat interview of some Sun developer about starting a
Bachelor of Computer Arts degree. I don't think this is idle speculation..

I guess that this post is a roundabout way of explaining my love of
programming. Go figure.

Sitting here in a green chair. Wood trim.
My left hand is bothering me because I'm typing on this
laptop with poor posture. My wife is in class still.
It's about 1/4 to 8 in the evening (localtime).

I'm tired now. I need some rest. I need to work hard
tomorrow doing things that I do not really enjoy.

But this I enjoy. Expression feels good.

I'm not quite so brave to pour my emotions into this as
my wife has done, but I think I'll come around to doing
that as well.

I was going to study POE (Perl Object Environment). Which
is a very creative method of making neat things happen :)

Of course, I don't need POE to get stuff done and
to enjoy playing, but it makes things so very interesting.
Instead, I'm writing to an anonymous audience from my own
semi-anonymous space.

Is this addictive or theraputic? Or both? One can get
addicted to therapy, or so I hear.

Strange. I just read the last two lines in the imaginary
voices of woody allen and mia farrow- funny?

Silly.

I want to use this thing for talking to myself.. post ideas
for me to see later, but Instead I'm talking you.
Well, I guess I'll have to deal with it.

class

2004-05-13T14:53:00.000-04:00

Tonight I will be studying on my own while
my wife will be in class dealing with CISCO routers.

While her work is organized and directed in class, mine is personal; a kind of educational itch.

Last night, she showed me a blog my a programmer (will have to see if i can find it again). The title of that particular post was something like Self Evaluation or
some such. In it, this person discusses his (her?) layoff this past year and talks about deciding whether or not coding is the way to go- does he like it enough? Is it what he
really wants to do with his life? etc.....

I wish i cold find that blog..... *sigh*.

Any way, where am I going with this? I guess I’m getting at myself going through what
might be a similar process, although a bit backwords.

A few months ago, I wrote a coupl of programs to help get information from one place to another. In helping other people to get their work done, I found myself really trying hard to make something worth while. I started paying attention to real software developement. Now all the code I wrote doesn't amount to more than a hundred lines, but who cares? I was (am) hooked! All I want to do is code (that's an exaggeration of sorts). All I need is an "itch". Doing something for someone
is a fantasticway to get that "itch" and dig into a problem in order to solve it.

It’s going to be three o'cklock soon, so I’ll have to go back to work.

This will be continued.

Typing. Two in a room.

2004-05-12T22:54:00.000-04:00

My wife is typing away at her blog... i wonder what she's writing? Here I am doing the same, but with less focus. No focus.

Just more typing. Oh dear.. got to go return Girl With a Pearl Earing.

ttfn...

she-bang!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2004-05-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use bedtime::taking_a_nap;

print"sleeping soon";

My gods!!! My wife is reading blog stuff to me-> it's disturbingly funny!! how can this be so very very very addictive?

Of course, going to have to concentrate on writing this- but it's so hard to
do that!!!

EGADS!!
tmtm.blogspot.com
She's reading this one blog by a person who loves to talk about work. tmtm blog. It's hilarious!!!

Ok. enough of that....

This evening I got to go to a local Perlmonger meeting... great chance to learn nifty programming skills which I most sorely lack :)

(my wife is /still/ reading to me *laugh*)

Well, we mostly talked about meta-topics... how to get younger folk interested in programming in general and Perl/GNU/Linux especially.

We also discussed future presentation topics- inclusive of a talk on neural-nets
and latinized perl (mine- if i get around to it :) )

oh!!! Almost forgot! Bruce Perens is going to be
in the area this weekend. If i get around to it, it'll be fun to see what's up :)

What else? Not much to speak of, but I think that I'm happy with things over all.

One thing I am not happy about it the uncertainty of getting a page off this
'blogspot' on occasion it blinks out- gods help us if it gets slashdotted....

Over all, I think that this is a good service and a good idea.

I've seen::::::

What a good and right way.

Wilson. Politics. Slow. Time.

2004-05-12T14:46:00.000-04:00

Earlier today (noonish) listened to the Diane reams show (spelling?) (URL?)
and hew discussion with a man by the name of... (something) Honoré (i hope that's the
right mark over the 'e') about his book titled In Praise of Slowness. The act of /not/
hurrying has got to be one of the most useful and healthy ideas for those of us stuck in the
industrialized world. (more on this later)

Then you have Fresh Air; another talk show with a bit more structure to it and without
folk calling in.

Former ambassadore (something) Wilson was discussing the damage that the Bush administration has
done to his life and to his wife's carrier in the CIA. I have very little time left here, so I
will have to continue this in the future.

for Better or worse, I must 'hurry' in my work today- none of this sloweness for me!!

Time. have little of it... maybe i'm getting silly.

Envy.

2004-05-12T09:51:00.000-04:00

I lack the skills of other bloggers.
unfortunate.

I'd like the oportunity to improve the structure of this place, but the things i need to learn are nearly out of my reach. It's time. Allways time that limits what we do. I think 'slow' is a good word to think about.

I have five minuntes left before i go back to working. I am behind in my go game *sigh* but it's lots of fun!

let me think a bit...

I've forgotten how to format tables... sad....

two minutes left.....

testing this blockquote thing...
this is new to me.

I see... usefull!! :)

chao..

willy

begin()

2004-05-11T17:31:00.000-04:00

Nothing more than a test post, or a self introduction to to this format.

after seeing the post on slashdot.org about Google folk putting up
blogs here, i decided to go ahead and place something of my own.

One nice effect of this is the chance for me to keep online notes for
easy review. :) I'll be able to pass ideas from work to home and
back with far less personal effort :) yes- there is no privacy with that, but i don't think that's a problem.

bien ^_^