April 28: Morning Sneeze

Out of all of the minor annoying in life, there's one that doesn't seem to get any attention: sneezing whilst brushing your teeth. It sucks.

April 26: A huge nerd

I, my friends, am I a huge nerd. While walking Janet back to work after lunch today, we decided to pop into Strange Adventures, the nerdiest comic book store in the whole world. I'm not normally into such things, but as I wandered around, I noticed that they had a copy of Return to Labyrinth, a manga sequel to the classic movie from our youths, Labyrinth. I'm not big on mangas but it sounds interesting. I like getting weird stuff. I have a zillion things on my to-read list, though, so who knows when I'll get to it. Boy oh boy, am I ever a procrastinator.

April 18: Downpours and disasters

Well, so far this week has consisted mostly of two things: an lengthy downpour of rain here and shock at the horrendous events in Virginia. The Nor'easter (a word I hate) that just swept through did a lot more damage in the US than it did here, but it brought a surprising amount of rain nonetheless, especially on Monday.

Speaking of Monday, the big event, obviously is the Virginia Tech massacre, an event that gets worse and worse the more you think about how horribly the situation was handled. Worst of all, the crazed Westboro Church — the folks that like to protest at funerals for fallen soldiers — are planning on protesting the funerals for those who were murdered on Monday. It really boggles the mind. I think the worst part of the whole ordeal is the way it's getting spun by every interest group with an axe to grind. Jack Thompson started blaming violent video games almost instantaneously, and people on both sides of the gun control debate are using this as evidence that their side is the right one. It's really pretty sickening — obviously, dramatic events like this are going to stir up a lot of controversy, but they could at least give the families a few days to grieve before starting to take advantage of the situation. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, the other event of the week took place yesterday, wherein some sort of domestic dispute and/or hostage situation happened on Hollis Street. I have no idea what happened, but the cops had streets blocked off from the time I arrived at work until after I left. The only thing I know about whatever it was came via Jamie listening to CBC Radio One, where they said that it was a domestic dispute. Things are always weird for the first few days after events like Virginia Tech, so maybe it was just a result of tension. Who knows? Things are normal today, thankfully, and I hope they'll stay that way.

April 10: Walk

I did something unusual today.

Katie and I have been trying to get into the habit of running again lately. We're not doing too bad, but we had some crummy (read: cold & snowy) weather over the weekend, which sort of threw us off. We met after work today, but as we waited for the bus, we started to notice how cold it was. The idea of going out running started to seem really unappealing. For some strange reason, Katie suggested that we just walk home from Halifax instead, which would provide us with exercise while not requiring us to wear not-so-warm jogging clothes. I was in.

So, walk we did, parting ways on the Dartmouth side of the Macdonald Bridge so she could head home and I could head down to Alderney Gate to catch a bus home. Overall, it was nice and outdoorsish. I can't wait until it gets warm enough to do stuff more often, but this was a good first step. It's fun to walk across the bridge, because the view is great, and you really don't notice how huge the harbour really is when you're zipping by in a car.

(Here's a fun fact I just saw on the Wikipedia entry for Halifax Harbour: 181 million litres of untreated sewage are dumped into the harbour every single day! We're a sick, disgusting city.)

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. I've got to go have a shower and get ready for sleep. Until next time...

April 02: Life Screen Saver

Well, I did it, I entered Iron Coder. The results aren't in yet, and although I don't think I won, I don't think I did too badly, either. The API was the Screen Saver framework, and the theme was life, so like any good nerd, I implemented Conway's Game of Life:

Screenshot of Life Screen Saver

It could use a bit more work, especially in the optimization department, but I really like the way it looks. The size of the pixels is proportional to your screen resolution, so you end up up with these giant, Pong-like cells, and a very cool aethestic. I like it. I'm actually using it as my screen saver.

I'm pretty impressed with myself considering the fact that it's only my second Macintosh programming endeavour. If you've got a Mac, try it out. It's licensed under a very liberal BSD open source license that basically amounts to “do whatever you want with it”. It was a blast.