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2008-01-31 pancake night
Tonight is the night of making pancakes as a token gesture to those whom I have grown fond.
Firstly though, I've been playing with some perl. As I've previously mentioned, this site is now generated into .gz HTML files for mod_gzip to read back. As I find writing wiki HTML much easier than HTML itself (as it's much easier on the fingers) I've dumped some perl regex around much of the leg work in the files that auto include.
$content =~ s/====(.*?)====/${c{'h4start'}}$1${c{'h4end'}}/ig;
$content =~ s/===(.*?)==/${c{'h3start'}}$1${c{'h3end'}}/ig;
$content =~ s/==(.*?)==/${c{'h2start'}}$1${c{'h2end'}}/ig;
$content =~ s/'''(.*?)'''/<b>$1<\/b>/ig;
$content =~ s/''(.*?)''/<i>$1<\/i>/ig;
You can go see vim as an example of the page that gets generated. It's just the same as this, except that my script reads the wiki version of it from file and up dates the disk if the MD5 differs from that which already exists.
BTW, use vim.
2008-01-30 the end of this era
Well as we get closer to the end of this week I have a short time to reflect on what I have accomplished since 26 April 2004.
Looking back I've learned some things and had chances to improved on skills that I already had.
Looking forward I'll be working closer with Apache at a much larger organisation and hope to see how things are in the bigger corps.
Perhaps the hardest things for me to do is leave behind projects that became a large part of myself and the friendships that I made during these days. In reality I do not own the projects, but I worked on something for the company, who in fact own the work that I did.
All the friends that I have made will leave a permanent mark on my experiences that I will never forget and will always be in my thoughts.
2008-01-25 update
There was a slight problem with my gzip module for apache when setting the content type. This is now corrected and the version number is bumped.
I have thought about hooking mod_mime with this, so that the mime type can still be set by apache but that might be over kill for my purposes, since only text/plain or text/html are ever set.
Other compressed mediums (gif/jpg/bz/etc) don't need to be handled by this code.
The ISP world seems to be getting smaller and smaller! Some of you know already that I'm starting a new job very soon, but so too is my friend and it turns out we're going to be working just 7 miles apart in the same town! Small world!
mod_gzip_disk-0.02.tar.gz. It's not my best code, but it's saving me a lot of bandwidth and CPU right now.
2008-01-24 heart strings
Some of the pages on this site are not maintained any more. I just have not got the time. To use a phrase, "someone is tugging at my heart strings", explains really what is going on. It's taken a long time, but finally I've found someone who I really like and get on well with, so my computing time has become dramatically reduced.
2008-01-09 where has it gone?
Looking at the systray clock its informing me that it's 23:31 already. So, where has my time gone and how can I have my evening back?
2008-01-03 last years half marathon
Here is a snippet of the event while I train for this years. I'll be raising money for a good registered charity very soon now.
2008-01-02 tk max
Having a play with python and tk tonight to get a set of graphics routines together in a way that will allow me to make a simple update function for the environment in a simulation. Seems straight forward enough for what I am after.
Not getting as far as hoped as I distracted myself by watching the moral epic "Gone baby gone". Obscure ending. Even so, it filled an hour or two.
The thing about working with python sometimes is that it's OOP is just cleaner than that of perls. There I said it. There *is* something that I think perl is less than perfect at. On some levels the syntax is cleaner also, but the square brackets on lists, tuples and dictionaries are more than just painful to type.
2008-01-01 new year and such
Well, 2007 is old and 2008 is new. What more can be said. There are some new year resolutions that I'd like to make however.
Resolution number one
Under no circumstances should I attempt to walk home from a night out on the piss from venues further than 4miles. Especially not at hours greater than 3 in the morning, or while not wearing shoes. Especially, especially not try to jog.
After some drinking I decided to go to a wonderful shop called Kebab Korner located in the market place which I've found to serve more trustworthy foods than other venues such as the burger vans, not that there is anything poisonous about the foods but it's just a lot less like a gypsy outfit. The food ordered was kebab meat with chips, something that gives me both carbs, fats and some proteins in one nice polystyrene container, fork included.
Trouble with this is that it can take a while to eat and I'm not sure what the reasoning here was but some how I managed to walk away from the market place and decided to walk the remainder of the route home, possibly the 4-5 miles... What a mistaka to makea.
En route I stumbled past what I think was some Solvakian or Polish house party where some girls were outside tempting me indoors... I dunno what would have happened if I hadn't remembered some bits of Russian which I used to some comical advantage and made some excuse up to not go inside... Where I could have been raped or mugged ... Who knows ... I'm glad that bullet was dodged as I was pretty drunk and anything could have happed if I had passed out...
Resolution number 2
Spend less time on yahoo answers. This is a rather pointless replacement for wikipedia or google. It would be ok, but their community is filled with people who know not how to use either.
Resolution number three
As with every previous year - watch less telly and exercise more.
Resolution number four
Get some better clothes.
Resolution number five
Study more - read more science books. Write more simulations.
Over the past few years I've dedicated the majority of my studies to computing. Recently though some foreign language studies have crept in and this is something that I've enjoyed a great deal - especially when I bump into someone in a club who happens to be a speaker of that language and something very strange might happen - the conversation of a dunk wasting the time of someone trying to help them...
Looking towards the future, perhaps ten or twenty years time I might develop hand problems which could prevent me from using keyboards as the main part of my job, so I should invest some time in skills that are not keyboard related.