inbetween

I hereby declare myself an Axis of Evil! I hate things that are different from my expectations. I loathe anything I don't understand, especially foreign languages, accents and poodles. I will tell people what I think of them every time they ask. I shall examine, critique, judge, denounce and criticize everything I see around me while ignoring my own flaws. I rightfully pronounce judgment on you, your family, your lawn and those stupid little minions you breed to stand around on my lawn.

Your very soul shall be subject to deconstructionism. Your political, social and theological views are wrong: you will be mocked for even daring to express them in my presence. I shall smite you for defending your friends or their haircuts.

Bug Ping! What the bug reports fly back and forth around the silly server. Michael serves a hard, fast bug to developer #1, who quickly assigns it (and associated blame) to developer #2. Developer #2 only reads the summary, decides that it is a feature and fires it back to Michael with the cryptic message, "varefy."

A stunned Michael drops looks on in awkward, confused silence. Does that mean it isn't a bug? Is it really just a game or is there a deeper, more meaningful message here? In search of a higher truth, he assigns the bug back to Developer #2 with the message, "huh?"

Developer #1 intercepts the message, sees the "huh?" and responds. "This is now a feature. Please document it."

Some news: (I think it is a good day to be gay!)

The Globe and Mail Anglicans clash again over same-sex couples

Every so often I get a lovely fun idea, the kind of thing that is so devious and wonderful that it makes me weep.

Today's idea is to write a fun little Perl script to take every sentence it is give and make it passive. Writing passive sentences is something I find difficult. It is difficult to read passive sentence. Boring writing is the product of an inactive voice.

I've been editing help files at work all morning. I think my eyes may cross if I see the word "so" used as a conjunction one more time. I'm supposed to be editing the documentation to update it from Version Ugly to Version Not-As-Ugly-Or-Functional, but just about every line makes me gag.

The other brilliant idea (the ray of sunshine really) was to turn documentation editing into a drinking game.

I'm in the middle of adding a new plugin to the website. I'm a little proud of this one, because I'm designing and writing it from scratch. The big question is,

What do the negativespace.net authors want?

That was a bit big. Sorry. Big question...

So, the description so far (All of this would be entirely optional, of course.):

It is called AuthorInfo. The idea is that there is a page where you enter some information about you. Then you can add some special tags, or somthing similar to put the information into your templates and eventually into your pages.

The information I think would be intersting to include:

• A description of yourself (as long as you wish, within reason) for an aboutme.html page or something.
  
• A brief description of yourself (some short summary or "quip") that you can add to your main page, or any other page (much like Joy does on her blog (it might be half way down the page, depending on your web browser))
  
• Your name, location (city, country, your choice of description) and maybe email (doesn't have to be public if you don't want it to be) or some other contact information
  
• A quick little copyright statement (© Michael S. Joyce, 2004) for example
  
• A longer copyright statement, which would be linked to from the short copyright statement
  
• A picture?
  

There will be a new template to bring all this together, and a new link to it. There'd be a way for you to update the information in the system whenever you choose, just with a simple web form.

So the big question is, what would you like to see it do? I can't promise to be able to add everything you'd like, but I'll try.

I promise that I will never, ever do this.

I've avoided adding too many blogs because I don't want to spend much. I know I can't put a lot of effort into the site (really, I think it needs more effort than I have time for right now).

I'm going to work elsewhere.

• Computer Science (3rd year) - one, with my least favourite prof of all time.
• Computer Science (4th year) - one, with my most favourite prof of all time.
• Mathematics (3rd year) - three, with unknown profs.
• Mathematics (4th year) - one, with a great prof.

I still need to add one fourth year C. Sc/Math/Stat class to that list, and four more electives.

Some time next month, probably around the third Thursday, I'll be giving a presentation on image compression to a photography club.

Woot:

1. I like compression algorithms.
   
2. The differences between lossy and lossless compression is fascinating. There isn't really a way to measure the effects of lossyness.
   
3. Photography is a big hobby of mine.
   
4. There is no grading, remuneration or other "carrot" for a good job. If I do well, it's because I wanted to do well.
   
5. I'll be able to actually use parts of my degree!
   

I'm terribly excited. I've got a month to prepare, and some ideas. It's free, so everyone can come and watch!

... or "How Not To Vote"

I walked into the silly little gymnasium, and saw all the busy, eager beavers doing their electoral thing. After the necessary paper work ("Wait Here", "Don't talk to him" and "I can't help you go talk to him") I got my ballot. As I was walking to the silly, cardboard voting booth I saw one of the Conservative scrutinizers. Something snapped.

"I think you're evil," just slipped from my lips and into the air. I didn't say it loudly, but really felt the need to express myself at that particular moment.

Well... She didn't like that. Nope, her overly sun tanned body, perfect hair, manicured nails, and pompous faux-British accent had a minor hissy. She called one of the Electoral Busy Bodies over.

After some fast talking (a brief conspiracy theory: magenta hair + voting = vote not for a conservative) I convinced him that she was mistaken and cast my ballot.

Five minutes later I couldn't remember which candidate I chose. Ah well. All's well that ends in a pseudo-leftist minority government. Hooray for the tyranny of the masses and all that.

I came home and finished up some of the design for a new negativespace.net page. What do you think?