fridgemagnet

More and more I find myself just not bothering with Perl at all, and writing any script I produce in PHP, no matter what it is. I use a lot of PHP for work and also for hobbyism, and hey PHP is standard with OS X too. But there is a tiny core of remaining shame at using what was really designed as a web scripting language to rename pictures with the correct colour of kitten or whatever other rubbish I script for.

so

Poll #1489003
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

Is it bad to script in PHP offline?

The total raised for this so far, by the way, is £20. So far.

The exhibition was of work by Ed Ruscha, who has been painting for 50 years apparently. Or more in fact, as the earliest painting there was from 1958 and I assume that it wasn't the first time he ever slapped paint on canvas.

It's an interesting exhibition if you are interested in signage, typography and pop art, which I am. I wouldn't say to be honest that I thought all of the work there was great. I like his early work more than his later, I think, based on his collection; it's mostly very simple but also amazingly tactile for paintings basically composed of words. I was entranced by his early "BOSS" painting, which up close looks like a chocolate cake, and in my notebook I wrote about "Sand In The Vaseline" (painted in egg yolk on moiré) "Really want to touch this!".

Other pieces I thought were really just piss-artistry or going down the wrong route of an idea; I could usually see what he was trying to do, or what I thought he was trying to do, just didn't think it was really working. Occasionally I couldn't see what he was trying to do but didn't feel it was saying anything to me, whatever it was.

One thing I did note was that there was always something in every room which made me laugh. For instance I laughed out loud at





Oh, here's a couple of items of swag that I picked up from the gift shop, neither anything to do with Ed Ruscha:

A pint of Guinness accompanied by a shot of black Sambuca, occasional sips of the latter whilst drinking the former, is not too bad and quite an interesting taste combination. Also if you decide you don't like said interesting taste combination you can just down the Sambuca and then you still have a normal pint of Guinness.

Depth-charging the Sambuca into the Guinness, however, makes the whole thing revolting. Don't do that.

and again

I got the Instax camera I was talking about earlier through the post today, which is quite impressive I think - the seller said she'd post it on Tuesday.

It is mini-er than the Polaroid 600 but also feels heavier, and is considerably noisier. This I expect is because it has a lens that goes ZWHEEEEEEEEEEP outwards when you turn it on, then ZWHEEEEEEEEaaaEEEEEEEEaaaaaEEEEEP when you choose between "0.6-3m" and "3m to infinity" focussing. It's not really a terribly sophisticated mechanism and to be honest I'm not sure why it's there at all - it's hardly as if anybody is going to be taking landscapes with this thing, is it? A fixed focus would save weight, size and battery life. It also has a simple exposure setting, which can be either "darken", "normal" or "lighten" - that is a bit more useful.

The little credit card sized pictures are definitely cute though. I should stock up on some overpriced film for it, though I dare say I won't be using it very often anyway. I think I will take it along to Christmas parties and hand out pictures to people for no particular reason apart from the novelty value, which I think is a good reason actually.

I have been a bit remiss recently. Here it is:

My birthday tomorrow incidentally. I'm not doing anything, but I thought I'd remind myself that it's occurring.

I did order myself a present... well, actually I didn't, I'm just pretending that I did. If I want something and I have enough money, I buy it; if I don't have enough money, I don't buy it. The time of the year isn't really relevant. But anyway, my Pretend Birthday Present is a Fujifilm Instax Mini 10 and some film, which I got from eBay for forty-five quid or so.

I'm very fond of instant cameras, and have more working versions than I do digital cameras, just no film. I have one Polaroid 600, the classic model, and the first model of the Polaroid i-Zone, both of which work fine but neither of which you can get film for any more. (Nobody has been selling i-Zone film for years and Polaroid just stopped bothering generally a year or so ago, though people are selling old film stocks at stupid prices and somebody's bought the factory or something to try to restart production.)

The Instax is the only system I can see that still seems to be in commercial production, and it's not in commercial production here. Fujifilm don't appear to be selling the cameras at all in this country; you can get the film from assorted websites at least. The Mini 10 is an old model, the Mini 7 is (illogically) the latest apparently, though they take the same film. The camera are on sale in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and south-east Asia generally it seems, with limited editions, Hello Kitty film, all that sort of thing, but not here. Why not? I don't really understand it, it's hardly as if, say, the UK has more digital cameras than South Korea.

That's what I bought anyway. There's a story behind it apart from my just generally liking instant cameras, though it's an unimpressive one: I had a dream recently with an instant camera in it. My notes read:

Had a dream where I mysteriously received a camera by post. As part of some items that I'd left behind somewhere? In a cardboard package. I was opening this on the top of a bus.

Anyway one of the items I worked out was an instant camera (being a dream object it could have been almost anything to begin with, though was quickly a camera). Now I have an urge to go and get one.

So I did.

Ongoing kitten situation is aggravating me but I'm probably being snippy and will get over it. It's also I think a bad sign when people you reckon are considerably more overworked than you say "wow, you've got far too much on, that's ridiculous". Hey ho, let's see what I can do about it.

I miss the kitten.

Being a sensible grown-up about things is rubbish.

BBC News (Channel) - 90 Second Countdown with full hold



and

Bill Bailey

I love looking at other people's notebooks - I'm not worried that I might be doing my own wrong, but I'm fascinated by how other people scribble. Thus I was interested to see Adam Saltsman's notebooking regarding his indie game Canabalt (which is great by the way).



More at the link.

I should scan in some of my notebook pages really, even if they haven't produced anything much that people would care about.

edit: and on the subject, as I just saw it after I posted this, more notebook pages from cleanskies

Oh, and NaNoWriMo - my consistent yearly piece of failure. I did actually start doing some interactive fiction NaNoWriMo this time, which was something I vaguely thought of for last year, and then squirmelia reminded me of. On the comments on this post I speculated that writing it in Ren'Py might be an idea, but I ended up with Inform, as I know Inform quite well.

While there's obviously a massive temptation to fiddle with the technical details of an IF NNWM in a way which doesn't increase your word count, there's an added bonus if you calculate the word count in the way that I am, which is to count all the potential dialog and object description as well as all of the room descriptions. What this means is that you can go off at random tangents about random items without it disrupting what narrative there is, as opposed to a normal novel where one might feel that spending five hundred words describing a notebook would bore the reader - because nobody will ever see that unless they type "examine notebook". IF is actually *better*, in my opinion, with this sort of drill-down detail.

I almost certainly will get nowhere near 50,000 words here as I'm incredibly busy at the moment, but it's an interesting thing to try.

I've not really been in the mood much and to be honest I'm not really now but, since I'm currently standing on top of a floating wooden cabin two thousand and eight metres above the virtual seabed, waiting to see if any problems come up during a demonstration that is already late starting, I might as well post up a picture of my damn moustache.



There's my damn moustache.

I have some hopes that it might turn into a proper Burt Reynolds rather than a Saddam Hussein, but given the rate that my five-o-clock shadow grows, I'm not sure it will ever be all that distinguishable from my normal sort of beard. It really doesn't look much different to me. I don't look in the mirror and think "oh wow who's that" - the moustache was always quite significant in the old beard.

oh, and give us your money eh

and why am I being given new urgent must-do-right-now things to do at half seven on a bloody Friday

I should have just gone out tbh

all right

she's gone

it wasn't going to work out, and it wasn't fair on her to keep her here for the next year in what is basically one room, but I feel awful about it, really terrible

I am really not sure how long I can keep this kitten here.

I have to shut her in the hallway now for quite long periods of time, because it's the only way I get peace at certain times of the day without having to worry for several hours - quite literally - that I'm suddenly going to have puncture wounds all over my legs. This is not just me being a wimp either; this is claws all up the leg repeatedly, and it hurts.

No sanctions work, because it's all a game; if I yelp and try to grab her, it's part of a fun chasing game. If I then put her in the hallway that isn't connected with the previous activities at all.

It's not her fault but it makes me think that this really is *not* the best environment; the problem is that there's nothing for an explorative kitten to do apart from annoy me, and the last thing I want to do is look at a kitten and think "you little fucker get out of my space" rather than "ahh how cute".

It's just not good for her, I am thinking. I don't know, I don't want to be somebody who abandons kittens, but she would go to somebody who was a bit better set up for the whole situation than me (it's not like I would be sending her to the RSPCA, she'd go to another proper home). Ah, argh, I don't know.

Shaved the chin part this morning, so even though the top lip really just has longer stubble on it, it is very vaguely moustache-like. I have a feeling that it may end up a bit Saddam Hussein.

This afternoon, I popped out of the house, around 3pm I think, and there was a man standing in the doorway of the Irish pub on the corner near me (the one that used to have noisy karaoke and bands on but not doesn't, which makes me a bit sad at the general reduction of fun in the world, even if it wasn't much fun for me). He was dressed relatively respectably and standing there quite calmly with one hand on the wall and the other by his side.

The only unusual part was that his knob was hanging out of his trousers, and he was pissing on the pavement. I can't remember exactly what I was doing at the time - going to the corner shop I expect - but whatever short errand it was, when I came back, he was still there.

I really can't work this situation out. If he'd been thrown out of the pub he wouldn't have been standing in the doorway. If he hadn't been thrown out, why would he piss outside? It's cold right now. I suppose he might have been about to leave, on the way out of the door, thought "oh I need a wee" and not been motivated enough to go as far as the toilets. And I suppose, from the back, given that he'd not pulled his trousers down at all, just popped his old chap out of his fly, and was facing outwards, the bar staff might not have noticed.

It's not really the sort of thing that makes me want to patronise the establishment though.

oh, moustache



Still stubbly.