March 29: In which I consider ironcoding

Ahh...another week, another fifteen minutes of ranting and wildly gesticulating on the Internet. Ain't life grand? Things are roughly the same as always here on Walton's Mountain. The weather continues to enwarmen (with today being a blustery exception), and it's actually light-ish out until about 7 PM or so. (I'm starting to wonder if it's the darkness, not the cold, that makes winter seem so dreary — opinions?) This is good, since it increases the amount of personally interesting time that I have. If it's dark by the time I get home from work, I'm not very likely to remain energetic and interested in doing zany things, not that I'm ever particularly energetic. I can sense things becoming more interesting already, having gone on an adventure with Nick, Keddy, Pugsley, and Castro the weekend before last and out for trendy beverages with Alex last weekend. Hurray for spring.

Something interesting in an incredibly nerdy way is happening this weekend: ironcoder five. For those of you with lives, I'll briefly explain. ironcoder takes the basic concept of Iron Chef and applies it to Macintosh programming. Tomorrow night, contestants will be given an API to work with — say, the accessibility APIs, or the 3D graphics APIs — and are open-endedly challenged to make something interesting and fun over the course of the weekend. This is the first ironcoder to happen since I've learned the basics of Mac programming, so I'm going to give it a shot. I might give up instantaneously, but it's be fun just thinking about it (and it's also satisfying to be exuding nerdiness so powerfully that it's almost audible).

Anyway, I've got a stack of episodes of The Office *this* big to watch, so I guess I'll tune out for now. I will keep you informed of my ironcoding progress, though — wish me luck.

March 23: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

A word of warning for those of you who will be in my presence over the next few days: I will be constantly singing the theme song to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I can't get it out of my head. If, for some reason, you find that I am not singing at any particular moment, I assure you I am humming quietly inside of my head.

Stupid ninja turtles.

As if you can't tell, I'm very excited about TMNT. Despite the fact that the whole “full name to initials” transition reminds me of what the New Kids on the Block did (speaking of things from the early nineties...), the movie looks awesome. Besides, it has Patrick Stewart in it — how can you go wrong? I know pretty much nothing about the plot of the movie, but I'm hearing really good things. I just bought tickets online for the show this evening. I can't wait.

In other news, Katie and I have decided to resume working on our fitness, so we started jogging. We're trying to go three times a week, and hopefully maybe we'll run in the Bluenose Marathon in May. Maybe. I had a good time when I did it before, after all.

Anyway, I should get back to work. Until we meet again, blog text entry field, until we meet again...

March 16: I'm building a computer!

Oh, man, I did the nerdiest thing today: I ordered a heap of computer parts online. I'm building a computer from scratch, something I haven't done since I was in my crazy tinkering phase in high school (and something I've never done with new components). It's going to be a file server, because that's something I really need. My stuff is spread over six hard drives in three computers, and it's hard to find things, plus I'm worried about my important stuff not being safely backed up. The solution is a dedicated file server. It has four hard drives: a 160 GiB drive to house the OS (Red Hat), a 500 GiB drive for movies and television shows, and 2 x 250 GiB drives for my important data, all RAID'd together and stuff. Neil from work is going to help me put it all together. I can't wait until all the parts arrive.

In other news, Mom's back from her semi-spontaneous trip to Mexico. She's been greeted with chilly weather and an impending winter storm, which is pretty much the best way to come back to Canada after a trip to a sunny climate. At this point, it's not really storming or anything, but the wind is starting to build and we're supposed to get lots of ice pellets and things. You know how I love a good stormin'.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of watching the first Lord of the Rings movie, so I should get back to that. I just realized it'd been forever since I updated this dang blog. I need a new layout so I'm more inspired to write about nothing. Le sigh.

March 07: Scribd

Oh, man, it's -25 outside right now. That's freaking COLD. I guess my I-give-up-on-winter attitude from last week was slightly pre-mature. Sadness. I think I'm doomed to always want a set of weather conditions that aren't going to happen. I should just move somewhere like San Diego, California where the weather is always exactly the same. You know, take the frustrating mystery out of things. Boy, do I need a hobby.

From the real life department, I don't have much to report. Archie, one of my grandmother's friends died over the course of the weekend, so I went to his funeral yesterday morning. It was pretty sad, since there were only 19 people there. I hope I get slightly better attendance whenever I die. I think that's one of the benefits (such as it is) of dying when you're younger: better attendance. Archie was 86, so I guess he didn't really do too bad.

Anyway, that's the only notable event for me from the past week. I can't wait until it gets warmer and amusing things become more likely to happen. Interesting things still happen online, of course, provided that you find things online interesting. I'm currently enjoying the wonders of Scribd, a new web site that's trying to be the YouTube of documents. I hate the name — I don't think the letter “e” can be dropped from the word “scribed” while still preserving its pronounciation, and the dropped vowel thing is so 2004 anyway — but it's actually pretty neat. Even though I initially thought it was a dumb idea (after all, the entire World Wide Web is a place where anyone can publish things, so why have one particular web site trying to be the central spot?), I've changed my mind. There are some interesting things on there, and more importantly, it's easy to see what's new and popular. They have some real gems (The case of the 500-mile email is an utter nerd classic), and a great interface. Plus, since they're using Flash, it's just as flexible as PDF but not nearly as crappy. As long as this is Google-able and doesn't fill up with crap, I can really see it going somewhere.

Anyway, I guess that's enough rambling. I should get back to work. Until next time.

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March 01: D'oh

Well, I got myself a parking ticket today — d'oh (says I, smacking my forehead). I borrowed my grandmother's car yesterday and planned on returning it at lunch today, so I just parked at the Barrington Market Superstore, figuring I'd be safe for three hours in their expansive parking lot. I was wrong, however. The ticket is only $25, but it's a bit frustrating. It's difficult to balance the two sides in my head (yes, I was parked on private property, but the parking lot was empty, so I wasn't doing any harm). Blah. Anyway, based on the number of times I've parked there in the past instead of paying for parking, I think it's cheaper to park for free and get the occasional ticket rather than shelling out $10 at a time.

Aaaanyway, not a lot is new in this neck of the woods. I'm still splitting my time between work, sleep, and helping Chirag with chime.tv, and I've decided to officially give up on winter. It's March. We're not going to get any good snow, and I've resigned myself to it. Today was actually really nice, in that winter-is-breaking-up-spring-is-near sort of way. Stupid spring. Anyway, it's really nice out, and that's super. Almost t-shirt friendly.

Alas, I have to go find something to eat. Until we meet again, blog, until we meet again.