“Hey you, with the pretty face, welcome to the human race”

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/2004/03/

Things I did this weekend…

  • …actually got to spend some time with Kate
  • …made lemon cupcakes. It turns out you can substitute olive oil for the vegetable oil the box calls for without any adverse effects (that I could see, at least)
  • …finally released source and binary archives for Mac-Package. This was difficult because the latest release candidate of Maven and/or SourceForge’s cvs servers is/are horribly broken. Based on the bugginess I have seen in both, I will reserve judgment until more research data is available.
  • …got the next version of iGallery nearly complete. This includes a rearranged object model, in preparation for plugging in a module for pics.livejournal.com, when the server software gets a little more stable and mature.
  • …a teeny-tiny bit of work on Magic Codes: mainly extra plugins.
  • …figured out the LiveJournal S2 style system, and converted my journal over to it, including a number of enhancements. There are still a few bugs, and I am not entirely happy with the edges/aliasing on some of the graphics, but it’s coming along.
  • …read the RTF Manual (someone please tell me that Microsoft picked RTF as an acronym for a documentation format as a joke)
  • …drove around with the top down and the stereo turned up
  • …started reading my dead-tree version of Eastern Standard Tribe

Can I take a sec. to talk about the LJ S2 system? It takes all the worst parts of Perl, Pascal, and C++, and throws them all together into one fun mess. A lot of the language constructs are a little haphazard, like Perl or Python. This makes the language a bit difficult to read, but helps with escaping quotes and such. Function prototypes and variable declaration and usage has a very Pascal feel (from what I remember of Pascal). The object oriented declarations are very C++ like: not wrapped in a Class, just defined on its own. The language reference is very detailed and very well cross-referenced…but it is just a reference. There is no real “getting started” or “learning” document, you just have to dig right into the reference and make sense of it all. The object model can get pretty complex in places, and is sometimes difficult to keep the hierarchy straight. Additionally, there is no real way to call a superclass’s function. You have $this->function, but no concept of a $super->function() type of thing, which makes things complicated when you want to extend a superclass but still use the majority of its functionality. Anyway, I think I did pretty well, for only messing with it for a few hours. I am a little bit unhappy that I cannot find an easy way of debugging or testing without making a change and looking at it live. I have no idea if anyone looked at my journal during the testing, but if they did, they probably saw some amount of brokenness.

To riff on ‘s list of compulsions from the other day, I offer up my own set of lists…

    Unexplained compulsions

  • Any electronic device that displays a number indicating volume must have a volume evenly divisible by 2 or 5: only even numbers and multiples of 5 are permitted
  • The shampoo goes closest to the corner in the shower. The conditioner goes next to it.
  • I mew at the cats all the time
  • The toilet paper roll has to feed out over the top, rather than under the bottom
  • I make all sorts of odd noises without realizing it: from animal noises (like the bawwwk of a chicken) to the bizarre (“pipsquack” and the space-gun sort of noise I cannot translate to letters but Connolly could probably demonstrate if asked), to random early video game sounds/songs
  • I am sure there are plenty more that I cannot think of now…
    Compulsions rooted in some form of logic (however bizarre that logic may be)

  • When stepping away from the computer, I have to lock the screen–even if I am simply walking across the room to get a book or drink of water and nobody else is around
  • The front door always gets locked, even if I am going just outside (within plain view of the door) to grab something from the car
  • I always put the cap back on a bottle of water or soda between drinks
  • Any DVD has to go back in its case when finished and cannot simply be left lying about (I’m not sure if this is a compulsive thing, or an anal-retentive thing, or if there is even a difference here)
    Compulsions I have grown out of

  • While I did not exactly count, I would always keep track of how many times I chewed on food on one side of my mouth versus the other. They always had to come as close to matching as possible. For every chew on one side, there had to be one on the other
  • Similarly, for every time I stepped on a seam in the sidewalk with one foot, I had to do the same for the other. I would also have to match up the approximate position–for instance, if I stepped on a crack with a part of my left foot close to the toes, a few steps later, I would have to step on a crack with my right foot in the same approximate place–and certainly not the heel.
  • Three-way light switches (the ones where you have a switch at either end of a hallway or stairs that both control the same lamp) must be down when off, even if it means taking an extra trip up the stairs.
Posted in: Books Dear Diary

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