development corrupts

i have in my hands a breadboard with some suggested beginner projects. I also have "Effective Go Programming" open in tabs.

(these two things are unrelated except for how they're both interesting, and both things I've been vaguely thinking of looking at and never actually got around to... and now I am because of encouragement!)

Every time I get invited to something (assuming it's not completely spam), I say yes.

So far, I've attended a couple tech events which were okay.

I've started hooping, which has led me to discovering a group of people within that community who a) are interested in coding for fun b) are interested in the arduino c) know a local(!!!!) supplier for arduino/raspberry pi/suchlike. I'm terrified of hacking on electronics btw, but perhaps starting to inch towards interest with this group of people.

I've hooped in public, even. In front of strangers.

I've learned that a.) hooping will bruise and b.) how to bruise just a bit less.

I've been included in an ad for TV(??), among a group of ~ 20 strangers. (v. brief, anonymous crowd shot)

I've signed up for calligraphy classes for pointed nibs (ooops).

I'm considering doing a 30-day challenge. I considered 100-day, but I've upcoming travel which will interfere. Buuuut man. This saying yes is paying off

( holy week + travel to singapore )

( weird weird dreams )

( nostalgia and RO )

( hard drive failure! but a happy ending )

Also I am grateful for friends who will take care of me when I get myself good and caffeinated. You know who you are <3

I love tea, and I have a couple containers of loose-leaf lying around somewhere, but I generally forget to drink it because we don't have a teapot, so it's very fussy to boil water in a pot and then pour it into a glass to steep, and then do that again once the single mug is gone.

But uh. Apparently we have a tea ball, which I found in box of post-its, and it is so much easier to use, frankly it makes me happy to a ridiculous level :)

(It just occurred to me that I could have used the hot water dispenser with the loose-leaf, but!)


SO ANYWAY. I have a stomach full of warm tea, a list of things to do, and a calm, relaxed sense of well being. Tea is awesome.



My grandpa wanted to spend some time out of the city, so we (grandpa, me, cousin, aunt) went to Subic over the weekend. Sadly it rained, which meant we had to forego a lot of the things we wanted to do, so the weekend was boring, but it was boring in a stress-free chill kind of way. That's okay. (In fact, that's very okay)

Also okay: we found a restaurant that serves an excellent fried shrimp dish with salt and pepper. Excellent I say :)

Ummmm. I did get to drape my arm over a tiger, though, so uh yay? It was two years old and kinda big but mostly it ignored us. So I wasn't terrified, but there was no way I was going to move my hand off of where the trainer put it.


Oh! And I borrowed my brother's camera, which beats my crappy phone camera, so theoretically should have been able to get decent shots. Unfortunately, I didn't really know how to compensate for blurring under low light conditions. I had to immediately throw away two-thirds of my shots because they were blurry; that leaves me some 250-odd to go through for quality. Still better than my old record which is taking two shots early in the day, then forgetting to get any later on.


Cameras are fun! Having been able to take photos on this trip makes me want to splurge on a phone with a better camera. I mean it won't be any kind of DSLR, but it should get me to near enough point-and-shoot that I'll be able to take photos on a whim (currently, whims are broken by the fact that the camera on my phone takes forever to load and doesn't really take good pics besides). Bonus: with the right app, I can just upload and share the pics as I take them, rather than having to remember to sync from the camera and organize and etc (...currently Flickr crashes on my phone when I try to upload. Another point for getting a new phone)

Currently my options are the iPhone 4S, and, well, the iPhone 4S. I've thought about trying out Android, but honestly I can't be bothered to wade into the ios-vs-android religious wars long enough to find a review that'll influence my decision either way.


Also, speaking of DSLRs, it turns out that if you turn the zoom level way up, that can aggravate blurriness in low-light, especially if you accidentally turn off image stabilization. Even the very best technology can't help a person who's determined to shoot themselves in the foot /o\



Also, also, I am tempted to tweak the default Tags module location so it's the first thing that comes after the entry, rather than the icon, but maybe that's too big a change now. Hm.

I run my dev environment (ubuntu) in a VM on my laptop, because that makes things a lot easier for me. Unfortunately

cmd+alt+fn + f1 through f6 = virtual terminal mode

(I don't need the full gnome mode, and the terminal I get to by logging in via the GUI login is weird. It seems to be bigger than my actual window size and all output is way past the lower edge of my screen, so when I type, I can't see what I'm typing, and after I run a command, I have to hit enter approximately half a gajillion times before I can find my output.)



apt-get install console-data
dpkg-reconfigure console-data

(installing and configuring console-data has let me set the terminal keyboard to dvorak, rather than qwerty. It's not a big deal; I usually just ssh into my dev environment using the Terminal application, but it's been a minor annoyance, that now is fixed yay :D)

I paid the (one-time thankfully) $5 fee, and have submitted the Copy Link Text Chrome extension to the gallery. Happy to have received some stars \o/

I've also created a git-hub repository for the extension.


I've been trying to spend some of my free time doing open source stuff that's not DW, so I can see what's out there (maybe introduce some things back into here, maybe not!).

So far, it's been fun. My biggest, er, thing, is that I apologize a lot. I'm trying to turn that around into thanks, so instead of saying, "I'm sorry I got my extension idea from a similar Firefox extension", I'm trying to say, "I loved that extension, I think it's fantastic, thank you for it! (In homage thereof I have written one for Chrome too *g*)"

Or, instead of saying, "Sorry for grabbing your lovely icon from the icon set you're offering for free", I'm forcing myself to see that "Gorgeous icon set, great icon that fits my needs exactly, thank you :DD" is the more appropriate response.

And instead of saying, "Hey, I noticed this issue, and I wrote a patch; the github documentation says to use forks for this, I don't know if it's right or if I seem rude. I'm sorry for even bringing it up x_x", I have a message which basically goes, "Hi, I loved $extension. There's just one little thing that makes it less than perfect, and it's $issue_I_ran_into. *contributes patch upstream*"

THAT KINDA THING.

Anyway, it's ridiculously hard to not apologize all the time. Ridiculously ridiculously hard! But I'm trying to turn it around, because while it feels inappropriate not to apologize (it really really does), it feels even more inappropriate to apologize. Before, I'd have just decided it was not worth the risk of offending someone by being awkward, and just backed away without ever having said anything. Now, I'm forcing myself to acknowledge that hey these people shared these things for a reason, and the polite thing to do is to use them ;-) (And give back too)

AND THAT IS THE REALLY LONG WINDED STORY BEHIND WHY I AM PUTTING MY EXTENSION ON GITHUB.

3_good_things_a_day makes me so happy :) The basic idea: a mod posts three good things that happened to them that day. You comment with your own list of three, and then feel free to reply to anyone else's comment.

It doesn't need to be something you've done (though you can mention those too). It doesn't even need to be big: my last comment included "the sound of rain". It just has to be something that is good *g*

It's also pretty low pressure; I've refrained from commenting when my day was particularly blah. I've also did leave a comment once on a really blah day when the effort of thinking of those three things helped.

S'all good.


sauce is another community which makes me happy. You share something with the community that's awesomesauce, and well, that's basically it. I haven't posted yet, but a lot of the things in there have had me grinning for days (or else ended up stuck in my head ._. also for days ._.)

First thing I do with my breakfast glass of orange juice is spill it all over my desk D: Had a moment of complete and utter panic that it would destroy my laptop and my external hard drive, but luckily laptop is up on a platform, and the hard drive was just outside the spill radius.

^_^v

(I had a dream last night that I was going around with v-signs for hands, and various emoticon for a face, trying to match the best emoticon to my victory hand. I guess I finally found it?)

From zarhooie :
Friending Frenzy, a friending meme. I haven't commented yet, but I've added a couple of interesting people who I've been meaning to subscribe to for ages now *G*

We had popcorn in the room last night, and the smell has lingered so when I move about I get these whiffs of butter and popcorn goodness. It is driving me hungry!

Lunch, get here quick. AND BE POPCORN.