Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2004/02/Are you allowed to say “a couple dozen meters” or do the metric police appear and beat you over the head for not using “a couple decameters?”
There was an excellent rainbow today. Coming back from Trader Joe's, it seemed like one end was anchored at the house. It disappeared before I could get home and find my camera.
While not quite a governor's pardon, Pants was granted an extension due to scheduling conflicts and second (third, forth) opinions not quite arriving in time. She is relaxing in front of a roaring fire now, and amazingly not clinging to my lap. Although…it kind of weirds me out that Pants' final trip to the vet coincides with my grandma's birthday. “Happy birthday, Grandma! Let's celebrate Pants' deathday!”
That whole “I'll have these cats until I'm FIFTY” statement now seems a little incorrect.
The good news is, according to “the guy who runs the lab the vet outsources complex bloodwork to and who sees these kinds of charts all the time” Pants is no longer shedding coronavirus (or FIP). This means The Precious is not as much at risk as originally thought.
The other good news is that this upcoming weekend, I may get to learn about Sphynx cats. I will learn how hard they really are (or aren't) to take care of. The “weekly spongebath” thing kind of scares me, but everything I have read says it is really easy, especially once they get used to it. I would rather know for myself, firsthand. I consider algebra easy and dressing in matching colors difficult, so who knows how Sphynx-washing ends up on my personal easy-to-difficult scale?
I really want to create a DVD-based “text adventure.” Writing advanced DVD scripting is much like assembly, only you are limited to 8 numeric variables and a very limited instruction set. My goal is to do the Zork “you are lost in a twisty maze of menus, some different,” but with the ability to pick up and drop items in various rooms (so you know where you have been). Given the limited variables but decent instruction set, I can do the logic. Given the limited UI, I am not so sure I can have variable things in the different “rooms” or an inventory screen. I may be limited to “Get ye flask.” “You cannot get ye flask.” Rest assured, if I do figure it out, I will probably post unencrypted VOB files for people with computer-based players or DVD burners.
For the OS X users out there: the CVS version of Fire v1.0-beta fixes the Yahoo connectivity problem. (If anyone wants a recompiled binary of the fixed version because they do not know how to or do not want to muck about with CVS or Xcode, let me know–I can send you a copy or help step you through the process for yourself.)
NPR is playing Radiohead (Kid A).
