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I could’ve sworn I saw a light coming on
I’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately.
Specifically, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve written lately; to wit: two plays, both for children, both to some degree based on Shakespeare plays, over the course of the last year and a half. The first, The Magic Island, was pretty much an abridged version of The Tempest, with more of a focus on ( Read more... ) -
We interrupt this prolonged radio silence to bring you an important announcement
So, in August, there's going to be a Citizen-Initiated Referendum in New Zealand. A referendum happens when ten percent of the eligible voting population (citizens and permanent residents over 18, IIRC) sign a petition calling for one. In this case, the question at issue (brought by "right-thinking" New Zealanders in response to the government's ( Read more... ) -
Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.
Over at this internet they have an interesting story about how they made a kind of neuron soup that they hooked up to some sensors and motors, to see if biological brain + sensory inputs + mechanical outputs = some kind of artificial life. It does pretty well at mechanical learning (getting better at not crashing into stuff), but what I found ( Read more... ) -
Currently listening
Right now, I am enjoying Tettix's wonderful (and free!) Rites, which is a sort of glitched-out reworking of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. It is excellent. If you are at all in favour of glitchy orchestral/electronic crossovers (and here I include artists like Venetian Snares, 65 Days of Static and Acoustica), you should make your way there ( Read more... ) -
I can't remember where I was up to
Q: What's yellow and triangular with six legs and a hardened, tri-sectional carapace?
A: Gregor Samosa.
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Pentru al un milionulea de ori…
I am converting numbers into words.
OK, so there is code out there to do this already, but the most commonly-cited Ruby solution requires the Linguistics gem, which is HUGE if you just want to display the number of comments on your blog or what-have-you. So I thought I'd have a go at it. It turned out not to be so hard, so I'm kind of ( Read more... ) -
Music is Math
The playlist on the office iPod has 272 songs.
At a crude average of 3:30 each, that's just under 16 hours.
At 8.5 hours per day, that's less than two days' worth of music.
It's been on all day, every day, for three weeks.
It's mostly Jack Johnson, Café Del Mar and Dido.
I am ready to shoot someone.
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Because I haven't been quizzed in a long time
1. What are your nicknames?
Um, I guess "Matt" is as much of a nickname as I have. Nobody really even calls me "mattmatt" anymore. One person calls me "honey", but she insists on abbreviating it as "hun" (as opposed to "hon"), which irritates me.
Would you rather die suddenly with no pain but no prep time or die with some pain but time to prepare?
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Let's see how this works out
So. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I bought an iPhone with (some of) the money from my very first professional writing job. It's pretty excellent: the killer app for me is having a proper calendar that I actually bother to a) take places, and b) keep up-to-date, so that the only appointments I really miss anymore are ones I made two ( Read more... ) -
What I am doing right now
I am having fun writing unit tests! On one level, this is weird. But on another, who wouldn't have fun writing the following test code?
Role[:wizard].grant_permission_to! :hug, User @user.grant_role! :wizard @user.should be_able_to :hug, @another_user @user.should_not be_able_to :hug, @tiger
Wizards and tigers? That is awesome!