Journal

Unknown

04/04/2005

News... what's new? Last month I had a bit of a false start with an entry here. I've been neglecting this journal and felt compelled to write an entry. Unfortunately, I only managed to assemble two sentences towards that effect. This month will be better. Sure, I mean... it already is. I know you're ecstatic. Whatever.

Essentially, the past month or two, or three, have been spent working on some projects and a new program, wasting time, listening to the sounds of workers smashing holes in the house, and hanging out with my friend Lauryn. The construction bit has to do with water pipe and structural changes to my living situation. An interesting related note is as follows. While replacing some old polybutylene pipe with new copper, one of the plumbers managed to drill into the main power line for the house. Think blinding flash of light, that's what I'm assuming it was like. So... charred drill bit, and singed carpet, ceiling, door, etc... Astonishingly, the plumber came out of it all unscathed. That wasn't the case for the power line, which obviously had to be replaced. Yeah. It's been weeks and I still don't have a bathroom. At least I have power?

What else? Hmm... The program I've been writing is coming along nicely. Yet, I keep finding myself rewriting large swathes of code to accommodate new critical features that have somehow just occurred to me. One of these days I'll plan a program from the ground up before implementing it. That's right, I'll create a spec for it and finalize it before implementing anything. Ha. The good news is that I came up with a nice configuration for syntax highlighting on plain text files in UltraEdit-32. It's essentially procrastination, some C and BASIC syntax, mixed with random weirdness, to facilitate pretty pseudo code musings on what else I could be wasting my time on. It's a vicious cycle. Indeed.

And I haven't felt like writing. Not this sort of writing, the poetic sort of writing. I suppose that's just as well with as much code as I've been churning out. There's an eerie similarity to writing poetry and writing code. They're both structured and composed of words. Yeah. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I tend to come up with my best stuff under the following situations: I'm trying to work on something unrelated and an idea pops into my head; I'm stuck on an idea for days and then the solution just occurs to me out of nowhere; I have a dream that spells out the solution; etc... What conclusion can I draw from that list? My subconscious is both a programmer and a poet and my conscious mind clearly has the role of stenographer. Maybe I strayed from the original topic. Yeah... Poetry. I don't think I've finished a poem since the beginning of January. Something's bound to materialize at some point... I hope.

I have to keep writing... I'm making up for a couple of months of neglect, remember? Yeah... so... Lauryn and I rented "I Heart Huckabees" the other day. Random, random, random, and good. That sums up experience, more or less. I'm still waiting for "The Life Aquatic" to be released on DVD. I need to see it again, and hear it. There's something to be said for a movie that contains both claymation and David Bowie covers. What exactly, who knows. Maybe I'll come up with something witty after I see it again, or not. But, yeah. I need to see more good movies. I've been increasingly disappointed with the big Hollywood releases. Future prospects are the new Star Wars prequel (which had better not inspire visions of Nyquil), Sin City (give me a few days, I'll make it to a theater eventually), several Tim Burton offerings, the new "Hitchhiker's Guide" movie, and... I know there are some others... drawing a blank. I guess there's something to be said for being pessimistic, sometimes I find myself pleasantly surprised. The films mentioned above should fall into that category. Emphasis on the "should."

Blah blah blah... Oh... right. I bought three +3 close up filters for my camera. I fully intend to do the absurd and attach them to the camera along with some others I've had in the following configuration: +1 +2 +3 +3 +3 +3 +4. Insanity, I know. I'm hoping I can actually get something to turn out with that. Any success I have will probably end up on the site somewhere. Wish me luck... or buy me a real macro lens. Donations gladly accepted. Should I keep writing? It's almost 6:30 AM. I'll blame that one on daylight savings time. I think I'll stop... here.

Beverage: flat Coke

Music: three computers worth of noise