2004-01-17 - 10:55 a.m.

It's freezing out there. Really window, too. I can see wisps of snow sliding along the street and great billows of steam being whisked away from the boilers at the mine. (If they even have boilers.. I dunno) It's so nice and cozy in here, though. There's sunshine for the first time in days. It was nice to get some snow, but it took me a bit to realize what was so different this morning.

I need to buy some rice milk so I can eat some of that raisin bran I bought. Just thinking of it makes my mouth water.

I played my electric guitar for the first time in a while last night. As always, absence made the heart grow fonder. Or at least I really enjoyed the sound in my headphones and had a lot of fun with it. And also as always, I kept trying to play new stuff that I've been playing on my accoustic, which turned out bad to strange. It's a great thing for me to have both guitars cause I can alternate between them if I fizzle out on one or the other. They're both so much fun to play, but both soooo different.

I'm beginning to realize what sound I'm making while I'm making it. I know this sounds odd, but especially with the electric it's very easy to spend all my effort concentrating on what I'm playing instead of what is coming out. It's like, while I'm playing, I can barely keep up the melody or remember which notes I'm trying to strike, or how to finger a particular chord, and while I'm listening to a recording, my brain is full of ideas of what should go next after a particular bit. I know that as my technique gets better and the mechanics of playing become second nature, I'll be able to focus more on the creative output. Like right now, I'm all focused on what I want to talk about and the act of typing is secondary. I only pay a fraction of attention to the keyboard. Mostly, I'm drifting through my thoughts, composing sentences etc.

I woke up thirsty. Then I watered. Then I set up my time lapse for the morning. Then I wanted to play my guitar. But I should have a shower. Then play my guitar :P Then I stopped myself on the way to the shower cause I was writing this entry in my thoughts, specifically the part about my electric guitar, and decided that I really should sit down NOW and get to it so it's finished and I don't forget.

All these things I do to love myself :) I'm happy with myself today.

Oh! Yesterday was a milestone in the application development. I compiled the new project successfully for the first time! It's very bare bones but has the raw framework that is necessary to support this complicated multi-capacity application I'm designing. Some days I felt like I wasn't all that as a software designer, but I know better now. Last night I was looking through my "program files" directory, killing some time while a time lapse finished, and pruning away old files that weren't removed properly. I noticed the real one folder and decided to have a look. What a laugh!!! I couldn't believe the sheer chaos with which that product is "organized", and I do use the term loosely. They have like 30 directories with 1 file of 1KB in them, and quite a few of those directories had an empty directory of the same name inside them, like "realplayer/lang/en/news/news". I saw about 15 different file formats, dozens of gif files all splashed around the place, and these stupid leftover files that shouldn't be shipped, like a test.html that makes reference to (and I'm being truthful here) a "nag" option. Can you believe these jerks? Not only do they program nagging behaviour into their application, but they actually have the gall to call it "nag" internally within the program and accidentally ship a file that mentions it to the end user! Gah.

So yeah, I may have worried that because my program didn't handle all the things that could go wrong with an installation, I was all that as a programmer. But in reality, considering the time constraints, it's looking pretty good. :P Heh.

Oh and for comparison, I had a look at the quicktime directory. Hmm, 4MB instead of 30MB, only 1 subdirectory instead of 30, only 3 or so file types, and not some crazy in-house creations like rpv and rpx and whatever they came up with that week, and only a total of about 10 files, all with obvious purposes. So you know who I'd want to work for ;)

And before Andrew gets sued by Real's lawyers (did I mention that a few of the largest files in the realplayer directory were the legal bullshit files? Not one, but two gloriously endless lawyerese files that doubtless cost more per line than any of the code they generate.) the opinions presented within this diary do not necessarily represent those of diaryland.com :P

ps.. ohhhh yeah it's Saturday! I can work all morning if I feel like it. I had been thinking I'd sit down with pencil and paper and plan out how to achieve my day's goals with the program, but then remembered I'd have to leave in like an hour, but now, I remebered, I don't!

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