« AppleScript, ECPG, and QuickTime | Main | Implementation Language Selected: Lisp »

August 30, 2004

Good Weekend

I had meant to work on the Io DBI interface this weekend, but never got around to it because I spent so much time being pissed off at Emacs and not knowing how to make it work like it should. It would up being the difference between (require 'ruby-mode) and (auto-load 'ruby-mode "ruby-mode"). Sigh… I love Emacs now, but sometimes I'm really befuddled at the amount of work that one can put into it before getting to where they want to get. In case I forgot to mention it, I'm supposed to be writing the database abstraction layer for Io. But I'm not sure when I'll be doing that. I don't exactly have hours and hours to put into coding these days.

I saw a couple good movies this weekend, Pushing Tin, which I had avoided for no reason I can put into words, which turned out to be quite good. It's got all the awesome of a John Cusack movie and it also makes one respect air traffic controllers to some extent. We also got Aguirre—Wrath of God based on a recommendation on Plastic. I liked it a lot, Alex didn't, what else is new. :) The visuals were really good, and the lead actor had some incredibly chilling moments. We also re-watched The Butterfly Effect and it wasn't as good the second time around. It was like taking all the gut-wrenching moments of your standard drama, and then playing them over and over again, while having a Llama fuck you in the ear. Or something else distasteful. I don't know…I love time travel as a theme, and I liked that movie in particular because the time travel was by will rather than technology or magic or whatever, but it was just too heavy I guess.

Eric told me to start reading his LiveJournal account, and to get in on the action between Major and Paul and so forth. I told him I think LiveJournal is the trailer park of the internet, he liked that. I don't want to say I'm all high-and-mighty with my Bloxsom-based blog out here on a real server somewhere that I maintain, but, hey! Look at that, I am. So fuck off. Nobody reads my blog, and that's really something wonderful about blogs that aren't on LiveJournal. I'm not really doing this because I don't have enough drama in my life, and though I enjoyed Jerry Springer, I didn't really want to participate in it. 90% of blogging is drivel about what a blog is about. The other 10% is drama. I have enough of both I think.

That said, I guess I've been feeling a little lonely for my gang. I'm sure they've moved on for the most part, because even when I chat with Bill he wanders off and doesn't respond so much, I figure everyone (as usual) has enough to do without me. This must be how Nick felt, and probably why he hasn't contacted me since I emailed him about going down to Tech. An outsider can't really take another outsider somewhere. So I think I'm going to email him with a different proposal. I dunno. I miss the guys. People ask me, “dontcha feel weird not going back to school?” Yes—I feel very weird, thank you very much. But it was killing me. I couldn't take another year of it, let alone two. At Matterform I'm learning lots of things that aren't really teachable, either because they change too fast or because it wouldn't make for an interesting research area. GUI design is fascinating, but coding them is tedious. Making a brilliant GUI is to make a GUI that's effortless to use. A lot of coding goes into that.

This morning, I was feeling ill, and Lllama came and sat on me, and was affectionate with me. I hope it was a glimmer of what's to come. She hasn't been a very friendly cat, but I always make sure to torment her. She also clawed me in the foot today when we were playing.

I am (once again) rewriting the random 5 bot for Alex's LiveJournal community. She wants me to help her make some “memes” which is apparently what they call the trite little quizes that all the LJ people take. She thinks it's a burden to me, but I love to code and I love to do little simple projects. it's always interesting to me to see how complex even a little program can be. Picasso once said something about, whenever you feel you can't paint anymore, stop what you're working on and paint a flower. Put all of your love into that flower. When you're done, your powers will return. I think this is very true.

I convinced Pablo that IRV was a bad idea, and brought him over to the right-thinking people who like approval voting. If only we could do this in the real world, too.

Life is truly good now. I seldom miss my old life, but it does come up from time to time. But I am very happy where I am now, who I am now, and who I am with. Everything feels very, very genuine and good. I've also had Andrew WK's “Really In Love” stuck in my head for about a week, and that can't be helping. :)

Posted by FusionGyro at August 30, 2004 06:17 AM