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How it is possible to spend hours filtering across the web, trying to learn parts of mathematics bit by bit until the clocks gone by…. And not be bored :

Headache or eye strain, yes occasionally, but not boredom lol.

Perl promotes laziness

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#
# We need to open a set of files for writing, and reference the paths later;
# the hash gives us a nice way to work with them later.
#
my %lgfiles = ( pidfile     => "${datadir}/${0}.pid",
                errlog      => "${datadir}/${0}.err"
                ...         => ... );

# but how do we open the set of files?


# this is a lot of typing, but common style in some places
open PIDFILE,   ">", $lgfiles{pidfile}     or die "some message: $!";
open ERRLOG,    ">", $lgfiles{errlog}      or die "some message: $!";
open ...,       ">", $lgfiles{...}         or die "some message: $!";


# this is better, but still too much typing
{
    my $msg = 'some message:';
    open PIDFILE,   ">", $lgfiles{pidfile}     or die "$msg $!";
    open ERRLOG,    ">", $lgfiles{errlog}      or die "$msg $!";
    open ...,       ">", $lgfiles{...}         or die "$msg $!";
}


# this is handy
#
# open each key in %lgfiles for writing to as KEY
#
while (my ($k, $v) = each %lgfiles) {
    open uc($k), '>', $v or die "can't open $v: $!";
} 

# same thing, but faster to read (IMHO)
#
# open each key in %lgfiles for writing to as KEY
#
map { 
       my $fn = $lgfiles{$_};
       open uc($_), '>', $fn or die "can't open $fn: $!";
    } keys %lgfiles;

For some reason, the intregration of regular expressions, qw/quote words/, map {} @list, grep {} @list, the $_ default variable, and the do_something or die $! thing are my favorite features of Perl. While in most other languages, the only great feature I get to enjoy is the trinary/ternary ?: operator, when there’s a place that it improves readiblity and reduces visual clutter ;-).

Ok, so my biggest beefs about Python 2.5 is no ? : and having to import re, hehe

Day dreams

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Recently, I’ve been drueling a bit at the T-Mobile G1, if I had the money to spare, it would really be worth it, in it’s own way lol. Especially the fun of bending it to the functionality I require from such a gizmo, although honestly; I don’t care much for such mobile devices. In America, we’re stuck in a country where it pays more to rehash last years crap then be innovative; just look at Microsofts last 30 years of products.

I doubt, if I’ll ever meet a gizomo smaller then a laptop but bigger then a pen, that I won’t consider unneccessarily “downgraded”, short of importing an old Zaurus PDA or building something myself. Heh, if I had the kind of cash Mark Shuttleworth has, I would really have some fun :-). Enough cash to cover the educational-in-betweens, and the cash to see just what is possible with modern technology…

And then sale it and go broke in the process of competing with same ol’craps that tries to set the users expectations, not go for the gold.

Days thoughts, thus far

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Managed to get to bed early last night, was only up to around 0330R haha. Dreams were a mixture, of pleasant and unpleasant; the former parts still being on my mind. I also woke up to some good news: an unexpected day off work! Which is good, because tomorrow will likely be a living hell…. as usual.

I’m tired, and it’s only 1736R. Really, I think the dog is the smart one lol, Willows been sleeping all day >_<. Last night, I posted on Daemon Forums asking for suggestions on a lightweight web browser to replace Firefox3. I've used Firefox for a really, really, really long time; but 1.5.x was the best hehe. I found Fx2 disappointing in terms of usability, and Fx3 has been totally useless for me on Windows, and a major pain in the ass under FreeBSD. I also went through Links 2.2, and tested it thoroughly; I could live without CSS support, if only it supported tabbed browsing in the GUI. Links is really a very nice browser on the user side, it also boats great speed and highly legible display. Today, I did some heavy testing on the FreeBSD and Linux builds of Opera 9.63. For a long time, I used Opera, first in the 8.5x and later into the early 9.x before switching defaults. Dillo2, Arora, and Midori are next on my hit list; but it would be awesome to adapt Opera as my standard browser again. I'm a person that very much likes to use his own personal environment, rather then someone else’s can of spam.

I also enjoy software that are both portable, easy to manage, and don’t make you unlearn things just for changing Operating Systems. One of my big beefs with Firefox for example, Unix edit->preferences Vs Windows tools->preferences. It adapts to what the user would expect, which is honourable for such a program I guess, but pisses me off ^_^.

Opera is one of the better proprietary products I’ve encountered, and one of my favorite web browsers. Unlike Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, there is no need to extend it in order to get the most bang for ya buck either 😉

Writer’s Block: Tricky Questions

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What is your first reaction when someone says “I need to talk to you”?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

“About what?”

What else could I possibly think of on first contact? >_>.

Ok, so my mind just works like that, lol — I can’t help it 🙂

Hard Target

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Caught an interesting action movie on, Hard Target. I’m not a fan of Jean Claude van Damme, but I was well impressed. Throughout the entire action flick, I couldn’t help but wonder who made this movie… the planning and use of the camera was awesome; in a way, that I have not seen for years lol.

I also had the train of thought, some where along the lines that if John Woo didn’t have some influence on this, I’d eat my hat! Sure enough, Directed by John Woo, and executive produced by Sam Raimi, which really explains a lot. The shots in the movie alone make it worth watching, the ingenuity during fight, fusion of gun play and close quarters, go well beyond what you see in many of the more recent action movies. Not quite the invincible hero syndrome of the 80’s, or the regular 90’s flair but without a doubt, superb! Hard Targets a must see for any action movie goer lol.

Also good to see a techniques using a pistol in each hand, combined with Van Damme’s foot work; which can only be outshone by the bayou lovin’, moon shine drinkin’ uncle lol.

I can really relate to this:

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Dark Helmet: Careful you idiot! I said across her nose, not up it!
Laser Gunner: Sorry sir! I’m doing my best!
Dark Helmet: Who made that man a gunner?
Major Asshole: I did sir. He’s my cousin.
Dark Helmet: Who is he?
Colonel Sandurz: He’s an asshole sir.
Dark Helmet: I know that! What’s his name?
Colonel Sandurz: That is his name sir. Asshole, Major Asshole!
Dark Helmet: And his cousin?
Colonel Sandurz: He’s an asshole too sir. Gunner’s mate First Class Philip Asshole!
Dark Helmet: How many asholes do we have on this ship, anyway?
[Entire bridge crew stands up and raises a hand]
Entire Bridge Crew: Yo!
Dark Helmet: I knew it. I’m surrounded by assholes!
[Dark Helmet pulls his face shield down]
Dark Helmet: Keep firing, assholes!

For some reason, they’ve been playing Spaceballs a lot lately, refreshing really – they usually don’t put it on cable that much.

scary…

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Ok, picking apart X86 assembly by studying code written for Linux under GAS, using NASM for documentation on FreeBSD, was fun.

When it’s after 0800 zulu, I’m starving, and picking apart notations is beginning to compile into making sense….. and you can’t remember the last time you slept at ease, somerhing is just nuts… : I guess, the real question, is how much will still be remembered in the morning, or with the time frame I’m likely to get to bed at, probably the _afternoon_

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Grrr….. spanning around 20 pages of wikipedia and other places on the net, I think I can kiss sleep good bye tonight…