Not Done Yet

I really should have spent more time today trying to write this thing. One year ago today, I wrote this. Now here I am, one year later, challenge more or less fulfilled, and I can't think of anything to write.

Would it be suitably ironic if I just called this a crappy post and left it at that? I don't think I have it in me tonight to write much more. I'll at least try to do a woodle for tomorrow.

Something's happened now that hasn't happened in a while – I have too many ideas. There are a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head, some related to my experience with TWToday, some related to my various fiction projects, even a couple of solutions to my Computing project code problem (which I really need to work on tomorrow).

The problem is that I don't feel like I can do any of them justice in the time I've given myself, especially given that I'm now very tired and can barely type a sentence without at least three spelling errors cropping up.

I think that's the problem with this one post a day strategy. I'm naturally lazy and keep leaving things too late and even if I didn't, I don't think I'd have enough free time in one day to write some of this stuff down the way I really want it done. That ridiculous sentence is probably the best example of what happens when I get rushed.

Or is it ridiculous? It seemed that way at the time, a mere moment ago, but surely with a bit of proof-reading and editing, I'd be happy with it. Maybe I'd be happy with it now if I simply read it over again. Maybe I could have been happy with it before had my poor typing and tiredness not been putting me in a bad mood already.

Was that the right tense?

I don't care. I can't be bothered going back to fix it.

Okay, I've made a decision. Tomorrow, I'll spend some time collecting my thoughts and writing them down. If I don't have them in a form I like by the end of the day then I'll simply save it, go to bed and work on it some more the day after. I'll also try to find some time to make a woodle and start writing The Grey Line again*. And I have to get something done on that Computing project I keep mentioning.


Crap. I went away for a minute and completely lost my momentum. Anyway, that's the plan for now. Hopefully, it heralds some better quality updates around here as well as the completion (or, more accurately, start of) several other plans and projects of mine.

And with that, I bid you goodnight.

Because I was really starting to get sick of that other catchphrase.







*Those paying attention (which at this point is probably just me and even then only for about half the time) will have noticed that I deleted the all the posts at Corbett's Fiction. I wasn't happy with them and I've decided to go for a whole new method, just as soon as I find the time.

Routines and Milestones

I'm a person who loves routines. It's the day after Christmas but as far as anyone could tell by observing me, it could be any day of the year. Aside from Christmas day.

Christmas came. Christmas went. And here I am straight back to watching the House boxset I was engrossed in when I stayed up on Christmas Eve, straight through into the next morning as well, to buy an old PC game on eBay. Oh, there are a few changes. I'm now using OS X Leopard instead of Tiger. It works great and I'll have to write it up for the MacTake but it's not made a huge difference.

I haven't made a start on any of the books I got though I have some nice rationalisations for that – I'm still in the middle of another book as well as several magazines I want to go through. Oh, and I don't have anywhere nice to sit and read. Comfy chairs and I aren't getting along so well right now.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to get back into gear. Well, after I've spent most of the day dealing with my little cousins. But if I still have the strength left, I've got a big list of things I need to do before I can even think of making a start on all my big priorities.

I need to get in touch with various friends to find out how their Christmas was and see how the trip to India that many of them went on was. I'm just speaking to Sam right now, which is a start. I need to sort through my presents and tidy my room. I need to do all that day-to-day stuff that I really ought to have done...

Meh. I don't know. I'll figure it out as I go along, I'm sure.

For now, I need to get to bed because it's back to going to the hospital in the mornings tomorrow. Got to have a bit of a lie in this morning at least.

Sorry for the short post. Got a bit sidetracked.

Have a nice day.



Oh, and this is the 350th post on TWToday and my 300th personally. Go me.

200th (lack of a) Post

So, I've apparently been at this whole blogging malarkey for 200 days now. I wonder just how many of those posts were like this one, where I have to apologise for not making a longer post or having anything interesting to say.

Oh, right, I haven't mentioned that yet. I have to apologise for not making a longer post or having anything interesting to say. See, I kind of have some Computing homework to do...

Don't look at me like that, it's hard.

Well, it should actually be relatively easy but, thanks to a combination of factors, it doesn't look like it will be. Basically, I have to design a piece of software that allows the user to enter numbers in a 3x3 grid (sudoku-style) and then save, load and display these grids. Problem is, the version of Visual BASIC that I'm using (and that the school has) doesn't support the grid tool. I found it online but it wasn't recognised as a registered ActiveX component or something and I can't be bothered finding out why.

So I'm having to create a workaround using a bunch of text boxes. Problem is, all the tutorials that I'm working from (some of which I've yet to do the whole way through and some of which contradict and confuse each other) are all based on using the grid control, so I have to go through them and figure out what I need to substitute and where. And then I need to write in the code and then do the design, because I've no chance of making a workable design if I don't do it backwards.

I get the feeling that I'm infuriatingly close (I can create the file, just not make it store what I want it to store) but that last little leap may require some concentration and late night coding.

Which is what I'm off to do now. And probably for the next couple of hours, surviving only on that weird influx of energy I get when I'm working on a technical problem. Kind of a super geeky adrenaline rush.

Have a nice day, since I almost certainly won't.



Later edit: It's quarter past 11 now and I've got all the program stuff working. It's a fairly rough prototype and it's having some trouble displaying the records I'm loading but it'll do for now. I can't quite decide whether to call it a night or persevere and produce the design... for the program that I've already made. I figure I'll at least make a start on the design stuff so that I can finish it off in school tomorrow without too much fuss.

Or maybe I'll just give in to my pounding headache and go to bed. Yeah, that sounds like a better idea.

Icosahedrons Rock!

Today being the first of September, this morning I casually flipped over my wall calendar from August, read the Dilbert comics for this new month and went about the rest of my day. Then I glanced up and noticed that on September 1st, today, some asshole had written “TWT 1/2” in permanent marker.

Honestly, who would do that, going around and vandalising someone else's perfectly good calendar? And what does “TWT 1/2” mean anyway? Is it some kind of crazy spin-off blog, following the adventures of Skippy after he's afflicted with a curse that turns him into a girl when he gets cold water on him*?

Well, no. Fortunately for us (and possibly him but he's Australian, so who knows), Skippy won't be getting involved in any gender-swapping love icosahedrons here at TWToday. Maybe he thinks he can get away with that kind of nonsense at the MacTake but not here!

I forget where I was going with this, so I'll cut to the chase. I was the one with the permanent marker and I made that note some time ago to remind myself that today marks the halfway point for challenge.exe (that's the thing where I do a post a day. No, I don't know why I called it that either) and also TWToday's half-birthday.

So now seems an appropriate time to look back on how things have changed here in this little vertex of the interwebs. I wouldn't say that the blog has evolved, since it's all technically the same generation and thus evolution, from the strictly scientific standpoint, doesn't come into play. It's more like it's matured, like a fine wine, or grown, like moss.

Features have come, disappeared for short periods of time, then occasionally come back again (I still have to do tonight's woodle don't I?) but each night I've had something written, even if it doesn't get put up immediately, owing to technical problems. Since I'm the one setting this challenge, I deem that to be perfectly acceptable and within the rules. And no, you can't see the rules. They're a secret.

Anyway, it makes me realise that I really need to do more with this blog, rather than just punching out some inane nonsense each day. I mean, today has effectively just been me saying that I've done this on many other days and that's pretty useless. So, I'll go get to work on tonight's woodle and try writing some more stuff, like a comedy sketch and my “fiction-that-still-needs-a-title” (a sane person would have said “as-yet untitled fiction”), tomorrow.

As well as doing more Visual BASIC. Assuming that I can comprehend the notes this time. And that the laptop I'm doing it on doesn't decide go BSOD again. Which it does any time I try to use the wi-fi adaptor after it's been in sleep mode. It's like clockwork... loud, clunky and useless for complex tasks.

Just because I can, here's an icosahedron. Thank you, Wikimedia Commons! And, on an unrelated note, why does Firefox's spell checker recognise "icosahedron" but not "icosahedrons"? Am I missing out on some sort of Maths grammar thing here?





*Irrelevant Ranma ½ reference FTW!!!**

**Irrelevant footnote FTW!!!

Bucking the trend isn't all that hard

Human beings love to give special meaning and symbolism to arbitrary things. A cluster of stars, when viewed from our little corner of the universe are deemed to look like a crab or a hunter by an ancient Greek, who was probably drunk at the time, and millennia later people are planning their days, planning the future of corporations and nations, on the basis that the "hunter" is pointing at the "crab" via Mars. Or something.

Meanings are also assigned to numbers. Third time's the charm, 13 is unlucky, 666 (or maybe 616 or even 665) is the number of the beast, or maybe it represents the Roman Emperor Nero, no one really knows, and 7 rears its ugly head all over ancient mythology and the Legend of Zelda games.

The only reason that we even have a base 10 numerical system is probably that our ancestors simply started counting on their fingers.

And so, by a quirk of evolution, we are led to the significance of the number 100. People who live to be 100 can ask for messages from the Queen, 100 years after something important happens, big celebrations are thrown, and anybody who does 100 of anything on the internet has to do something special when they hit the magical three digits.

Not me. No, I'm a trendsetter. A lazy trendsetter who's doing his special post at number 102.

It's an abundant number, the atomic number of nobelium and the emergency telephone number for fire in Israel. It's also largely irrelevant to this post but it provides a convenient means to justify that whole bit above.

There's no real topic for today so I'll just say that, so far, I've been enjoying blogging each day on TWToday. Sure, sometimes I'm unhappy with what I write but other times I feel that it's brilliant. Even if those feelings are unjustified, none of this would have been written if I hadn't been determined to keep up and prove to myself that I could do it.

I'd thank someone other than myself, but I'm the only one who ever does anything around here.

Meditations on scrolling

I've spent hours today lying on my hammock, reading 2001. "Summer monsoon", my ass.


I have absolutely no idea how I survived before the invention of the scroll wheel.

Seriously.

Not a clue.

The scroll wheel, or ball, as the case may be, is such a commonplace thing that it is very easy simply to take it for granted. The Apple Mighty Mouse is a very nice bit of kit but that scroll ball spoils me, to the point where I become incredibly frustrated when it gets dirty and starts to stick a bit.

I notice it most on web pages, where scrolling down, far more often than up, is an essential part of, you know, actually reading the web page. If it weren't for the proliferation of the Internet, scroll wheels as we know them may not exist. And that would be a tragedy.

Take a second to think about what your scroll wheel does for you.

It goes above and beyond the call of duty in not only allowing convenient scrolling, but also being the basis for a third button with which tabs may be opened and fast scrolling accessed. In games, it can be used to select any number of things, from rocket launchers to pikemen, not to mention the zooming of sniper rifles and the control of camera angles.

While watching Farscape in a not-necessarily legal way (I'll buy the DVDs if I like the first few episodes [which I do, by the way; it's a very good show]), I've noticed that using the scroll bar on any other window freezes the streaming video (but not the sound) temporarily. The scroll wheel means that I can surf the web without interruption. I'm not entirely sure why that happens, but it does and I'm glad that there's a way around it.

The scroll wheel is an essential part of technology today, allowing flexibility and laziness that were unknown to the previous generation of input devices. Think about that, the next time you come across a long document or need to move to the bottom of a long list.



On a completely unrelated note, Blink is now one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes ever.

On another unrelated note, I've just remembered that tonight was meant to be my 100th post. And I did it on the importance of the scroll wheel. Kind of sums up this blog doesn't it? Oh, well. I'll do some reflective stuff tomorrow. Seems like commemorating the 101st of things is becoming a tradition by accident around here.

101 Postations

You read that correctly (assuming you read the title). 101 posts on TWToday. One-Oh-One. A Hundred and One. Hun...druno and uno?

Most people like to celebrate the 100th post or comic or episode or Mario Party game. But not us. No. We're different! We're rebels! We're unobservant and lazy! I'd noticed that the 100th post was coming up but was too lazy to point it out to Skippy and he didn't even notice, accidently posting the 100th post.

Well, I don't want to focus on that too much since, while it is something of a milestone, it's really only worth noting and then moving on from.

Just a few notes then, because notes posts are easy to do:

• My exams begin in 2 days, with Higher English on Friday. Today was my last actual day doing Higher subjects since I begin study leave tomorrow. I'll probably have more to say about that tomorrow.

• I finally got sick of my blasted router wreaking havoc with my DS and sorted out the settings so that it uses a compatible encryption system. Naturally, as soon as my DS starts to work online, we discover that Sam's only works for two Mario Kart races at the most. And, of course, I can't get a decent wireless signal in my room.

• Cassette tapes are apparently being phased out of a major retailer and this has sparked a slew of nostalgia about "mix tapes" and tangled reams of magnetic tape. I'll admit it's sad to see tapes finally go, but calling it the end of an era seems to be a little bit much. When did you last by a cassette tape?

• I wholeheartedly recommend that you watch this video.

• And finally....

Okay, I've been thinking about this for five minutes and I don't have anything else. More tomorrow, when I have time between learning English quotes.


"There will be time, there will be time,
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
There will be time to murder and create,"

-T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

My 50th postday

If I fail my exams, you know who's fault it will be? Jordan Mechner. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is far too good a game, and one I should probably have completed years ago, when I bought it. Now I have a Physics paper, three English essays, dozens of English quotes and more revision to do and I can't stop playing the bleeding game.

Oh, well. On to more important matters. Less trivial, anyway.

This is my fiftieth post to TWToday. I'm extremely impressed with myself. I don't think I've ever done fifty of anything with out any outside pressure. Sure, I've breathed in and out more than fifty times in my life, but there was more of a reason for that than “because I felt like it”. And don't get me started on air pressure.

I think it's traditional when you reach a milestone like this to do something special. TV shows often have either very important or very funny episodes to mark the occasion. Bad TV shows have clip shows. Magazines look back on the previous years of publishing. Webcomics creators like to make cameos in their comics, giving themselves a pat on the back. Everyone wants to thank their viewers, their listeners, their readers, etc.

I don't think I can do any of those things, since I don't seem to have any viewers or readers (I may have some listeners, but I'd never know and neither would they), and in the grand scheme of things fifty posts probably isn't that much. But it represents something. I'm not sure what, but it might be determination, resolve, the courage to stand up for what you believe in every day, the feeling of immortality that comes from putting your views out into the world... or that blogging is a highly addictive and dangerous pastime. It's probably that last one, considering all the sleep this little hobby has robbed me of.

Anyway, I haven't really got much to say (I thought I had but I seem to have forgotten it all) and I promised something special for this, my fiftieth post. So here it is.

I have this really weird tickly cough. I'm not sure what's causing it but I'm starting to suspect that, because I haven't shaved, the hairs on my chin are running out of room and have begun to grow inwards.

If that's not special, I don't know what is.