Nuts, some days just pass so freaking slowly :-S. The local time is almost 1500, and it feels closer to 2100… I’ve largely been up since before 0400. As I commented to a friend about an hour and a half ago, it’s like watching a snail go by on a flat tire, sigh.

On the upside, I’ve come up with a few interesting ideas, that remind me just how much I love the thrill of programming: and how much I need, a private notebook for collating my ideas in brewing. Particularly apt, would be something backed by a git repository, and an markup like Rst or Markdown lol. Actually, if I could afford a paid account on GitHub. Oh, ain’t that just peachy: firefox just hung, then crashed. If memory serves, there is a personal wiki somewhere that uses a vcs as a backend, mm.

Something that bothers me, is how disparate my services have become: it kind of comes with choosing the best tools, and being pushed into a web oriented sphere o/. There’s just no way to win, really. To have my cake and eat it to, either I must munge together horrendous scripts, or bite a bullet, and move towards a direction, where my operating system provides most of the software I need, that I haven’t written myself… which is a scary idea.

Why is it, that people like me, our doomed to think up solutions to problems, but never the time (or clones) to work on everything at once? Oi, somehow I am reminded of a comment about engineers, seeing the world as a set of suboptimal pieces… now if only there were some more optimal ones!!!!

In reading through Steve Yegge’s old blog, I found a statement that perfectly summarises what selecting a programming language for a complex project is like:

So… the best way to compare programming languages is by analogy to cars. Lisp is a whole family of languages, and can be broken down approximately as follows:

  • Scheme is an exotic sports car. Fast. Manual transmission. No radio.
  • Emacs Lisp is a 1984 Subaru GL 4WD: “the car that’s always in front of you.”
  • Common Lisp is Howl’s Moving Castle.

This succinct yet completely accurate synopsis shows that all Lisps have their attractions, and yet each also has a niche. You can choose a Lisp for the busy person, a Lisp for someone without much time, or a Lisp for the dedicated hobbyist, and you’ll find that no matter which one you choose, it’s missing the library you need.

Except replace the lisp dialects with every language ever written, and factor in portability issues, and you now know what it’s like to be a multi-lingual programmer xD.

+1 for updating my stable system

Wowsa, looks like the new bwn driver actually supports my laptops integrated broadcom wireless, ’tis good. At least I know if my faithful Atheros card dies, I won’t have to buy a replacement lol.

Of course, assuming it actually works if I try to connect it to my WAP, hehe.

Now this is what a *real* web surfers experience looks like: What Firefoxs memory leak feature taught me about life

It also reminds me of an old photo of mine:

Having used Firefox since the 1.0.x days, I’ve also come to find it one of the single most annoying web browsers ever written. Then again, I am also a weirdo who thinks both Internet Explorer and Mozilla should rot in hell… for crimes against the Internet.

Morning Freako

Leftover home made Mac & Cheese for breakfast at 0630 – cheap.
Having slept late and still beat sunrise out by several hours – priceless.

A chuckle at NTFs expense

In glancing at their roster, I just noticed they have 8 officers to 7 Enlisted, and only just recently did they gain NCOs in that mixture, lol. Some how, I am reminded of something my Grandfather once said about officers…

That NTF has yet to grow past being made up of dissenters and tag alongs is understandable given their pace of movement (I observe about 1.5 x GCHQ speed on average), even if there structure suggests they provision for reaching more than double their present size. I guess none of their planners have heard of the bubble before, hahaha.

Fun idea, or just paranoid?

Tunneling basic services (web browsing, instant messaging, etc) over SSH through the file server (connected via Ethernet), as extra guard against the workstations own encrypted wifi eventually failing.

Nah, I am just nuts… lol.

Noticing Booone’s Avatar on the [SAS] forums, I can’t help but think their admins and moderators are collectively lazier than ever.

Just a stretch of the legs

After much protest and being threatened, I finally completed my trip to the library on foot. The outlook for potential execution days being Monday, Thursday, or Friday. During work Tuesday, I noted the possibility, but ma’s errands were much to time consuming. My original pan for today, being to start out around 0830 or 0930 local time, and aim to be home cica lunch, but being prompted for more errands, it was already lunch time when I set out o/.

I made quite good time, carrying about a load of about 7 to 7 1/2 lbs: my laptop and associated items, just in case. The computerized card catalog is virtually worthless in my experience, and it’s simply easier to find books by hunting on shelves; much as finding good books with the old card catalog, usually was done by seeing what cards came up in flipping through to whatever you were looking for lol. So I made sure to setup an offline reference, to how the local library organises books. I really do not mind walking, so much as I mind Georgia’s driver’s. Only real thing I can complaine about, 10″ to 15″ brush can be a pain to go through at a rapid pace.

Aside from a few cars having a bit of a dual, basically driving in the left lane, and practically on the left side of the road,  things were fairly uneventful… should we say, I’m not easily squashed. The only real hiccup, was stepping on a screw along the last half kilometre: I could feel it pressing on the bottom of my foot, and ended up kneeling along side the road, trying to pull it out: in the end I had to use my wireless card to pry it out of the outsole. I think if I felt around on the inside, I’d probably find a pin sized hole in the insole to match lol. Not the first time something like that has happened to me over the years though. On the upside, if anything serious had happened, I was within limping distance of the hospital >-<.

While walking, I noticed that the ~200ml I had to drink before hand, wasn’t enough, but it made up for the mornings driving about. Fortunately as I remembered, the library has a drinking fountain in the main entry hall ;). Still, I would fancy being able to carry my canteen along :-/. For starters after arriving, I decided to head towards literature: something to sooth my mind rather than put it through its paces. I’m more interested in the science and technical sections >_>.

I sat and read much of the first act of King Lear, before deciding to start heading home; less HRP get to worried 8=). I also checked out the copy of the book; judging by the texts notes, it looks like it airs on the side of the first folio with elements of the first quatro being merged. There’s nothing special about the selection of King Lear, of the works on the shelf, it piqued my interest most; it’s also been on my list of things to find time for, in some decade or other. Checked out the book, so I could continue reading it… and to see just how much annoyance I’ll have to deal with in between marches.

The ability to read the classics, is minor: since I can do that from the comfort of my own computer; in fact, I have several stored for off line reading! However, being able to sit and read, in PEACE, is priceless! That’s one of the reasons I love libraries, you can actually sit an read without being disturbed a whole lot; excellent place to study.

As for the return trip, it was fairly uneventful, it just reminded me that I’m still out of shape lol. I ran a few 40-60m stretches of the trip, after that, I started to get fatigued a bit. This is what I get for working in the family business all these years, instead of enlisting when I still had a good chance. When I got home, I prompted drained a good 500ml of water before sitting down.