I experimented with the Gimp some more, checking out some of the filters and stuff. I “oilified” my dog.
Not so impressive, not like the one below. Did I mention that I’m proud of myself? I have more ideas and stuff that I’ll probably get to work on this month when I’m supposed to be studying. I must get my website sorted too.
I got all five of the assignments I was lumped with at the last minute done and submitted today, after working from 10am to 1am yesterday. One of them I fucked up royally, but it probably doesn’t matter because I did every other assignment for that subject, two of them I did enough of to do pretty well on, and two of them were fucking excellent, in my opinion. We’ll see if my lecturers agree.
In my programming course, only four of 18 assignments (selected at random) are going to be corrected. That pisses me off, because I did every assignment but 2 perfectly, and if he picks either of those 2 I’m going to be down marks, undeservedly. It’s a stupid system. It shouldn’t be that difficult a matter to run each assignment to see if it works and then scan over the logic of the code to see if it’s any good, or came close.
In any case, I now have a month to procrastinate before I start getting really stressed about exams, especially economics and maths. Galway will the venue for this procrastination, where the comfort of my own bed will keep me snoozy until past one every day, and the temptations of television and drinking (but unfortunately not fast internet) will occupy the rest of my time.
Of course, I have the usual rose-tinted notion of getting up early, spending 4 or 5 hours studying by my open window with the sun and warm spring breeze pouring in, then relaxing with family and friends in the evening. But as we all know well, sun and warm spring breezes don’t exist in this country, and relaxing with family and friends involves hangovers the next morning, which implies getting up late, lethargy and laziness, which implies more relaxing to recover…
Fucking Ireland.
I’m working on a supplemental site to this one with all my poetry and writing stuff on it, and anything else I can think to stick on there. It’s coming along nicely. every page will use JavaScript (in an external file) to write the html for the menus, so I’ll only have to tweak a couple of files when I want to add new sections and stuff. I have yet to find suitable hosting though, by which I mean free, without banners or popups.
I got Java working! I got Java working!
It was probably working all along, but my dumb self just couldn’t see it. In light of this new development, I’ve decided to write my life program in Java, because it’s easier. And I should really focus on one thing before I move on to another i.e. learn Java well before learning C++. I don’t like the way C++ does OOP either. Not that I’m any expert on the subject…
The SP (which I’ve decided against leaving) have also asked me to write a database program for them. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to write a program which will keep track of their newspaper subscriptions, print labels for envelopes, and remind the user when subs are up for renewal. I’m not sure I’m going to do it yet (or if I can) but it’s tempting. I’ll definitely do this one in Java, possibly storing the data in XML format, since Java has classes for reading and writing XML, and it won’t exactly need a huge, industrial-strength database. But if I can find something already written that’ll do everything they need, I’ll just point them to that.
My former employer is being sued by some drunken eejit who cut her finger (it’s a nightclub, lots of broken glass). I was involved. I gave her a plaster, and when that didn’t do any good, somebody else came and dealt with her. I never saw her again. But for some reason I keep getting phone calls asking me to describe what happened, and what she looks like, and did I see what happened, and where it happened… but I don’t know shit. Now I have to meet up with some guy, an “adjuster” I think he’s called and tell him the whole horrible story, and hopefully that’ll be the end of it.
I went to Kerry at the weekend. Twas sweeet. Ate well. Drank some. Jumped in and out of the sea. Walked on a couple of beaches. Read “Count Zero” by William Gibson. It wasn’t half as good as Neuromancer, and somewhat difficult to understand, but I liked it. I think I even got it. A good weekend.
I’ve decided to write a program. It’s not a very exciting or ambitious program, it’s not technically complex or conceptually interesting, but it’s a program nonetheless. I’m finally starting to put into practice my realization that if I want to get anywhere in anything I do, I have to lower my sights and start simple.
So this program is going to implement the life algorithm which I discovered in the appendix of a book called “God and the new physics”. It’s designed to show how behaviour can emerge from a system which operates according to only a few basic, well-defined rules. I’ll be writing it in C++, although I should probably write it in Java. Maybe I’ll do both, and throw Python into the mix for good measure. Should be a blast.
I went war-walking in Galway this weekend. The great southern hotel on Eyre square appears to have at least 4 Eircom access points. I found two other networks, one generic, the other belonging to galwaywan.org. I didn’t even know there was a wireless WAN in Galway, but they have an access point in the middle of town!
