Normally I don’t do these but this one has appeared on virtually every nerd authored blog I read so I thought I’d better add my own. I think I was expecting to score as an Asimov or a Clarke rather than Gibson— I was never much a fan of cyberpunk.

I am: William Gibson The chief instigator of the "cyberpunk" wave of the 1980s, his razzle-dazzle futuristic intrigues were, for a while, the most imitated work in science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Now, everybody do it!

__________

* I think Dawkins’ meme has been wrongly coopted to mean "popular time-wasting distraction"— and this is the first and last time I will use it in this sense.

— Driving home in the evening (no sound)

This poor blog has seen better days… I don’t seem to have much to post lately, largely because of the amount of mental energy going into work right now. It turns out I’m pretty crap at estimating the hours required for various tasks, because I keep forgetting to multiply everything by three. And right now I’m in a pretty foul mood, largely thanks to Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005. Because of its buggy crapulence I’m going to lose at least a day of my weekend just to keep from falling further behind. Until recently all my development was using the relatively stable VS2003, but for various reasons I find myself converting several projects to 2005, and instead of taking the half hour or so that I expected I must have toiled for at least five at this trivial task (staying back until 9PM)— and I’m still not sure the same mystery problems won’t come back because I’m still not sure what caused them (basic symptom is linker errors as it tries to link to non-existent object files, without even trying to compile the damn things first).

So anyway, I think I have to start acually doing something interesting in my spare time again, so at least I have something to write about here. If email correspondence is anything to go by then my primary focus should be on JujuEdit and Drivey. The following is my favourite piece of feedback to this effect (received late last year):

Quit your day job, focus on your craft (Drivey) one time. Before it’s all over, you’ve died, you’ve squandered it, YOU FUCKIN’ ROBOT.

Love,

Scott (and the D)

Thank you Scott (last initial J) — I hope you don’t mind me reposting your message here :) I appreciate your, er, enthusiasm, and the point is well taken, but since I am just barely solvent right now it will be some time before this becomes a realistic possibility. To be honest it’s not time so much as energy that’s required, especially for Drivey. I just need to find some enthusiasm to restart development, which is one reason the MacBook appeals (will be buying one shortly I think, although my recent experience with XCode at work has cooled me a little on doing direct development on OSX— the version I was using didn’t even have syntax hilighting!).

And now, since this has been such a whiny post anyway I’ll finish up with my top 5 Things Which Really Piss Me Off Right Now:

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
2. Credit card insurance which is made deliberately tedious to opt-out of, so basically they get away with extorting about $50 a year from me.
3. Rory, for changing his mind again and choosing not to spill his guts and end his career.
4. Websites which can only be accessed using a www prefix, ie when www.example.com works but example.com returns a 404 error… DUH! Here at intepid.com I actively discourage the use of this redundant nine-syllable prefix— go on, just try prepending a www to the domain name!
5. People who rely on ad hominem arguments, as well as the people who call them on it but insist on using the term ad hominem when doing so. Too many people don’t know what it means, and there’s got to be a plainer way to say it.

I need to draw more often— this is the best of about 5 sketches today. I think it’s one of those skills that fades over time.

An eggcorn is kind of like a malapropism and kind of not. A classic example is to replace the phrase "all intents and purposes" with "all intensive purposes". Most of us have probably laid our fair share of eggcorns without realizing it, but when you write it down it can’t be missed. Reading the comments on Skatje’s blog today I noted an interesting example:

I’d have to say that from reading your posts here, you’re pretty much the spit and image of Dad. #

Someone else later pointed out that it wasn’t actually an eggcorn, and lo, they were right; both "spitting image" and "spit and image" are valid, and although the former is now far more common, the latter actually predates it.

Then almost immediately I spotted another bona fide eggcorn in a comment on her father’s blog (where I spend far too much time) coincidentally appearing in a sentence that is in fact a response to the first example:

Moreover, the implication that all of PZ’s children being athiest means he has indoctrinated them is bold faced wrong. #

This is a perfect eggcorn (hope it’s not a typo), in that it sounds like the original bald-faced, carries much the same intended meaning, and as a bonus is quaintly relevant given the context in which it appears.

1. 1280 x 800 — I’m seriously looking at buying a MacBook; since they are now Intel based and can run both WindowsXP and MacOSX it seems like a good time to switch (or rather, straddle). I especially look forward to getting my simpler apps ported to Mac, as well as using the iLife suite for stuff like video and sound editing. Maybe even get into Garage Band.
2. Not get fat — I’m as heavy as I’ve ever been right now, and of course according to the grossly unreasonable BMI scale (Body Mass Index) I am in fact well into portly territory. So it’s fewer TimTams for me and more whatever healthy people eat.
3. Get shit together — Rather than rounding out the list with a bunch of specifics, this is just a catchall to basically say that at the end of 2007 I plan to have my shit significantly more together than it is now, across all areas of my life.

That is all.

This note came from a recently opened time capsule which was originally buried in 1981, when I was nine years old. Who says kids have great imaginations, eh? Actually I’m quite impressed at the amount of qualification [or hedging] employed in the auxiliary verbs might, maybe and could. The only thing I predicted as a certainty is the wearing of wrist phones.

My apologies for being slack in posting my New Year’s Resolutions this year, although I suspect everyone is sick to death of reading lists on all the other blogs anyway. Maybe later this week.