Hacking activities
Well, the weekend didn't turn out as productive as I had
hoped. Much of the time that I should have spent hacking on
XFree86 4 was instead spent forking Debian's ALSA packages.
The current package maintainer seems to have some
staggeringly strange ideas about package relationships.
Once these are finished, I'll make them available on my
Debian webpage, put up a Packages.gz, and let users
vote with their feet.
Not-so-hacking activities
Got through about eight chapters each of Tcl and the
Tk
Toolkit and The Final Days. Tcl's syntax is
every bit as quirky as people warned me. Ousterhout is
right, there really are just a few simple rules; I just have
to learn to selectively switch off my mental Bourne (and, to
a lesser extent, C) syntax filters. It is interesting to
read about the Nixon presidency and contrast it with what is
regarded as political malfeasance today. In Nixon's day, it
was believed that if word of the Huston Plan got out, it
would be terribly damaging to him politically. Today, Louis
Freeh testifies before Congress, bald-facedly asserting the
necessity of surveillance powers that were but a spook's
masturbatory fantasy in 1974 -- and yet hysterical partisans
try to take down the President for getting his pole waxed by
a coat-tail riding fluffer. Things in this country are
screwed. Maybe I'll have to stow away in Wichert's luggage
next time we're at a Linux conference together.
How much do I owe the RIAA for this?
Popped a couple of CD's in the stereo, cranked it and the
guitar amplifier up, and got in some practice today. Half a
dozen Beatles tunes (Day Tripper, We Can Work
It Out, Paperback Writer, Lady
Madonna, Hey Jude, and Revolution)
and Limelight by Rush. Two things really suck
about the latter -- 1) trying to count through the guitar
solo is unholy difficult, but also the only the way to play
it right; 2) the clean channel during the chorus was a
single-coil overdub, so I have exactly the space between two
eighth notes to move the pickup switch *and* step on the
distortion pedal to switch it to bypass, if I want to
reproduce the original parts. Playing that clean part
through the humbucker sounds awful to me. Oh well, I guess
I'll just have to palm-mute the part instead. Did I mention
how hard it is to count the solo?
Quaint thoughts
Frankly, I think people have the right to be
disinterested in whatever discussion threads they choose,
and don't deserve to have inflammatory rhetoric used against
them. Connotating "quaint" as "brutally dismissive" -- very
clever, reinforces that male stereotype of brutality. These
are diary entries. People should take what they want and
leave what they don't. They should also be left free to say
why they're taking or leaving it. :) This is not a
symposium. Diary entries should not be regarded as attempts
at persuasive speech, though they may contain strongly
opinionated remarks. IMO, the right way to write, and read,
these entries is with a generous dollop of indifference to
the interests of others. That said, may I should take my
own advice and just start ignoring the person by whom I feel
provoked. :)
Hmm, wish I had some more hacking talk, but today just
wasn't a very hacking day...I caught enough of tonight's
X-Files episode (written and directed by Gillian Anderson)
to note that it seemed primarily to be showcase for the Moby
album, and some really shallow introspective monologues. So
I got myself an antidote to both; popped in Liquid
Tension Experiment 2 and indulged myself in 75 minutes
of anti-minimalistic instrumentals. :) (Actually, the final
half-hour is a relatively laidback.)
