Saturday - Not much going on. Nice weather, with a storm predicted for later and tomorrow.
My friends boy finally got his license, so I let him drive down to the
local park and ride, on the freeway. He did a pretty good job, but then
it was a fairly light traffic morning too. He'll do OK. He mentioned
that he took the "pass by examination" test for his geometry class at
the local JC on Monday, and thinks he passed it fine. On to college
algebra!
Book #38 was A Rising Thunder,
by David Weber. This is the 109th (or something like that) book in the
Honor Harrington series. SF, not bad, but nothing special.
I haven't done a "found cd" in a while: I saw this while out walking the other day:
Friday 23 March
2012
Friday
- Spent the day doing this-n-that. Not as much programming stuff as I
wished, but so it goes. I'll work on it a bit tomorrow, I'm sure.
Blog trivia: A few weeks back I accidentally overwrote week_10_2011.html with week_10_2012.html,
which was itself corrupted somehow. Fortunately there was a backup, but
things were kind of scrambled there for a couple of days.
In the evening there turned out to be a performance at the LPAC: BLAST!.
If someone had described it to me: trumpets&horns, drums,
semi-ballet dancing, I probably would have passed on it, but the energy
and enthusiasm of the troupe was engaging - I found myself applauding
along with the rest of the crowd.
Book #37 was Shadows in Flight, by Orson Scott Card. This is the latest in the series that started with Ender's Game.
In fact, after switching to a different protagonist in the last few
books - Bean, instead of Ender - Card is now switching to a new set of
characters, thus allowing the series to go on indefinitely. I don't
begrudge an author the chance to make money on sequels, but he's going
to have to provide a little more content than this book offered. I
think it was meant to be YA, but it didn't really gell. Card is a good
writer, and his duds are better than a lot of the best work of other
people, but this book had no oomph to it.
Thursday 22 March2012
Thursday
- Put in about another 8 hours on the OC stuff. Getting into the basic
graphics handling stuff now. That part is easy, it's all the OC cruft
that one has to wade through to get to it that makes it difficult. This
book, by Alessi, is OK but isn't as good as Kochan. Both content wise -
it's not as well written and organized; and physically it's too small.
I'm using the Safari Online version, and on the IPAD the text font is
just about a 16th of an inch high.
The Safari Online IPAD app still needs some work.
One can use the IPAD built in three fingered zoom mode, but since the
book is a PDF scan the text doesn't wrap to fit the screen and you end
up zooming in and out to see everything. If you turn the IPAD sideways
(landscape mode) the Safari app switches to two page mode, and the text
is even smaller...
What I actually find myself doing is bringing the book up on the PC
screen, next to the Mac Mini screen, and using both computers. I can
also bring it up on the MAC if there is a bunch of code I need to
copy/paste, but I'm trying to type in a lot of this stuff by hand, just
to get used to the IDE.
There is an annoyance with the two computer method: sometimes I am
typing in the wrong window, which is the wrong computer. It doesn't
affect the safari text, but I end up with stranger gibberish than usual
in, say, the ViewController.h file.
I spent about 3 hours mowing, edging, weed whacking, in near 80F
temperatures. I didn't mean to spend so long, but it's the first yard
work of the season... Man, I was beat by the time I was done, and
dripping sweat. I had to take a shower and a couple of aspirin.
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Wednesday - Back to work, grinding my way through user interface stuff in Objective-C. About 8 hours.
I had to go across the street in the afternoon, and ask the neighbor
kids to turn down their bass. I think it's been about 3 months since my last request, which
is pretty good for teenager's. They are good kids and never give me
any static about it.
I went by the Friends of the Lancaster Library sale, but didn't see anything I
couldn't live without. I did pick up Orson Scott Card's latest, Shadows in Flight, from the library new books section, so that's cool.
I thought that today, 21 March, was the spring (Vernal) Equinox ... but, of course, it's a leap year and the equinox was yesterday. Oh well.
Here is a photo of todays near-equinox, near sunset:
Tuesday
20 March 2012
Tuesday
- Feeling a bit better. Not much, but by evening I dared to leave the house.
Went out and watched John Carter
in the evening - not bad. Not phenomenal, but a decent movie overall.
IMAX 3D was interesting, but not really impressive. Too bad there were
only 5 of us in the theater!
I did find my copy of Cruel Zinc Melodies,
by Glen Cook, and finished it. I won't add it to the "books read" list
because it's already in there, in 2008, but now I've read and reread
all the Garrett PI stories and don't need to worry about it for a while.
Monday
19
March 2012
Monday
- Feeling very unwell. Gahh.
It was a great weekend! Friday night we had dinner out at a fish place
down at the Oceanside harbor. I didn't realize that there was that big
a harbor there, I though it was perhaps a few dozen boats, but it's
rather substantial. After a bit of a delay getting in we had a nice
dinner. Saturday was a nice day out in the eastern portion of the
county, doing some shooting in the desert. We were concerned about the
weather, but it was overcast and dry @ 70F - very near perfect shooting
conditions. Coming back we met the storm, a good drencher. In the
evening we went out bowling locally - first time I've gone since
breaking my finger. I only bowled in the mid 100's - so, no change
there!!
Sunday I did a bit of tech support, getting all the tv's in a friend's
house working correctly with Netflix, then it was back to Lancaster.
My friend R did all the driving, which was nice of him ;-)
Sunday
18
March 2012
Sunday
- Stormy weather, still.
The house was fine on my return, the cat was very happy to see me. More than usual, I'm not sure why.
This is the tenth anniversary of the blog. Originally on dial-up,
hosted on a small account at a local provider. I never had great plans
for it, so I'm a bit surprised it lasted this long. Not everything is
recorded but it makes a nice aid to memory.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: Gull in flight,
Channel Islands
Harbor, 2012.
