Yep, it’s another one of those Fridays where I wake up at noon, spend an entire day reading the web, and generally mess up my inner clock by not even looking out the window or talking to a human. Then, at 2AM, I am seized with the need to do something so that the day won’t be a total write-off, and… post something to my blog.
Because that would make it a worthy day.
And since I can’t be bothered doing something worthwhile (like a recap, or a review of all good/bad media consumed this year), I am just going to clean away my “drafts” – unpublished weblog posts that I entered but never finished or published. This is going to be short.
Geek stuff:
- Perl best practices, an article by Damien Conway that is probably worth reading even if program in a different language.
- Becoming familiar with a too-big codebase? – I ran across this discussion in PerlMonks which touched a nerve. I shudder to recall the hairy code I was handed, and how long it was before I learned to use the perl debugger, which is pretty easy (compared to some of the C++ debuggers I’ve had to use) and very useful.
- One day I should read this online book, called Text Processing in Python. God knows I’ve had to process some text in my time…
- I meant to link to an utility called SlickRun. Well, now I did.
- The Open JavaScript Archive Network is an attempt to do for Javascript what CPAN does for Perl. CPAN is probably the most amazing thing about Perl (beyond the language itself); a single, central repository for libraries and extensions, filled with wonderous stuff, that seems to have just the right thing you need for, well, anything. Almost.
- The Internet keeps taking to me about AJAX, which is the technique of using Javascript to load stuff from the server without reloading the whole page. A couple of months ago, I helped upload and debug a trivial web form that someone (Guy Weiner, I think) managed to write using AJAX (and XSL!) instead of simple CGI. I shuddered at the wrong-headedness of this. That’s probably why I thought this was really keen: AJFORM, a simple javascript library that lets you make normal web forms “AJAX-enabled”, while still let them work normally as a fallback. I thought this could be a good way to try and gradually convert a regular CGI application to a more responsive AJAXish interface.
- A list of CSS tips. You can never have enough CSS tips.
I also made a
The king of Elfland’s Daughter (Lord Dunsany)
Ash (Mary Gentle)
In Search of Zarathustra (Paul Kriwaczek, non-fiction)
Dread Empire’s Fall: The Praxis (Walter Jon Williams)
Down and out in the Magic Kingdom (Cory Doctrow)
Singularity Sky (Charlie Stross)
Atrocity Archives (Charlie Stross)
Once on a Time (AA Milne)
Rapture of the Nerds (Charlie Stross and Cory Doctrow)
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)
Anubis Gates (Tim Powers)
Darwin’s Children (Greg Bear)
A scattering of Jades (Alexander C. Irvine)
Lucas Kasha (Lloyd Alexander, Hebrew translation)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince (JK Rowling)
A Fine and Private Place (Peter Beagle)
The Gate of Worlds (Robert Silverberg)
And look, here’s a free soundtrack from a Conan computer game! Great if you need moody music and have over-used the Basil Poledouris masterpiece.
Other stuff, random passing fragments embedded in blog like woodchips in amber: I wanted to lament about losing the iGo Juice universal power supply I had for my laptop when I moved, and having to buy a new power supply for my weird Dell laptop. But since then, the laptop with its newly-bought power supply have been stolen. I wanted to rave that my brother was one of the winners of a big animation contest; I wanted to rant about assorted roleplaying theory posts I read, and what they make me think about my gaming in general and Il Nostro Gioco in particular. I wanted to write about going to see Suzie at the end of a kind-of bumming day back in July, and being overcome with emotion and beauty – that entry had just this opening line: Candyfloss clouds grazing in a watercolor sky, sunset shadows cutting across golden fields, waves of greenery breaking by the side of the road. Such a beautiful day, I drove to see Suzie.
)
And finally, I once wanted to blog this funny quote from Nick Locking’s LJ:
I just made [[his girlfriend – DD]] watch The Empire Strikes Back, the undeniably best Star Wars film (seeing as it doesn’t contain ANY dodgy bits at all and has some of the best action scenes in film history, and I was expecting a bit of her trademark charming inability to understand nerd things as a result of being extremely Italian, but nothing really prepared me for her pointing at the AT-ATs majestically stomping over the snowfields of Hoth in puzzlement and asking “what animal are they supposed to be?” I can’t even begin to understand how her mind works. It’s like she’s from an anti-matter universe or something.