Security issue in Rails. Successfully deployed the patch in minutes. I <3 the open source community.
So now I feel weird seeing all the really thoughtful things Leeviface posts all the time. I’m thoughtful. For real, guys. I really am. So why am I not sharing big fancy thoughtfulness posts at all times?
I think there are a few reasons. (I say this with two in mind; we’ll see if I come up with more.)
First off, in addition to being a thoughtful guy, I’m a busy guy. Of course, saying that kinda implies that Leeviface, who is also busy, shouldn’t be posting things all the time, either, so I guess that doesn’t really work. But, I mean, I have at least 5 or so projects I want to be working on in my free time and a handful of video games lying around that I started, then life got busy, then I started something else. It’s tricky. And this week will probably be super-busy, since I have a Physics SAT2 coming up and I know very little physics. Hum. Time to learn a year-long course in four days. I wonder if I’ll end up being desperate enough to skip school Friday. Heh. I like how I’m planning ahead now. Of course, it didn’t quite click with me just how little of this physics curriculum I had learned in last year’s Physics Honors class. A lot of this is familiar, but it’s not stuff I could have done last year. The very simple practice problems are significantly more difficult than our final exam. (Granted, it was a really, really easy final, though I hear not everyone thought so. I’m a textbook learner by default and become a teacher learner when necessary, so I do well when the teacher struggles since I’m caught up while he/she is busy making sure everyone else knows what they’re doing. This little parenthetical section doesn’t exactly sound modest, does it? I might remove it on re-read. Dunno. Is that cheating? I’m not sure if I’ve committed to a stream-of-consciousness format or if I can just do whatever I want. Or maybe that’s what I want to do, so it’s—bah, I’m getting out of here.) So it’ll be interesting to work all this material out and see if I can actually manage my time properly. Sorry, side projects. No soup for you.
Oh, hey. Break here. Really looking forward to AP Macroeconomics, since it’s a teacher I haven’t had in years who is really neat. It’s gonna be bundles of fun. Bundles.
Sunday and Monday was the church Geocaching Lock-In event. That was super cool. Some other high schoolers and I went around planting our own little geocaches around town and gave the teams the coordinates. Most of the caches had little goofy group activities in them, and one per group led to a house where they were fed a really neat home-cooked meal :) It all went surprisingly smoothly, and the event as a whole was very well-constructed, weaving together awesome fun stuff (e.g. geocaching, which was only a few hours of an almost 24-hour event) and spiritual stuff in a really powerful way. I gave the wrap-up talk. I think I did well. (I can’t really be sure, but people say I did, and they weren’t bored enough to talk to each other while I was talking—which is quite the accomplishment with teenagers.)
I guess that kinda works for another me-being-busy example. I was kinda just straying from the point, but it came full-circle well enough. Most of Saturday was spent as prep work for the Lock-In (figuring out where we would hide the caches, grabbing coordinates, etc.), Sunday morning was the classic church service, then more Lock-In prep, then the geocaching part of the night, then some other things, then a good 10-hour Smash Bros. Brawl marathon, then breakfast, then sleeping through most of Monday. It was a really neat weekend, but time-consuming.
See, part of the problem is that, when left to my own devices, just typing whatever comes to mind, I don’t go all profound. I talk about the events in my life. It’s a nice little release and all, but it’s not the sort of thing that people really like to read. It’s not universal; in fact, it’s exactly the opposite. M’kay. I’ll start working toward the tone I want.
The other reason I have difficulty discussing my thoughts is my big, fat emotional wall. I’ve made a good point of being significantly more outgoing over the past few years; however, I’m not sure to what extent that’s a fundamental shift in my personality and to what extent it’s a second personality built up to protect the inner one. I have trouble opening up in general.
Of course, part of the deal is that I don’t think I have a ton inside to make open. I don’t share my deepest darkest secrets because I don’t really have any.
Okay, fine. Not true. That there was yet another defense mechanism: offering an alternative explanation as an attempt to deflect further probing. I’ve definitely got stuff that I try to work through. It’s not really all that serious (gah, do I mean that, or is that just me continuing in denial, or both?), but it’s there.
Maybe I’ll talk about it later. I’m getting tired. (It’s true, but it’s also an excuse.) Plus, I’ve got physics work to do.
So that’s that. Even after all this, my stubborn refusal to actually go into my personal thoughts shines through.
Then again, why should I? This is a public area; is it really appropriate that I discuss my very personal hopes and fears out here?
Then again, is that even what I was talking about in the first place? Thoughtfulness is not necessarily introspection. The fact that my thoughts turned toward self-psychoanalysis first seems to be indicative of something or other. The moment we started talking about my personal thoughts, subconscious alarm bells went off, and I began coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t even go there.
I think a poem belongs here. Then again, it wouldn’t be worthwhile.
That’s another thing I’m worried about. Often, when trying to sound profound, I look back at whatever I just said and say “wow, what a loser. Thinks he’s saying something original, does he?” On the other hand, cynicism is overdone, too. Creativity is all fine and good, but what isn’t totally derivative of something else? Is originality really all that important if it’s not even achievable?
It doesn’t really work, Leeviface, when you claim that you’re just rambling. Your random thoughts at least go toward some central theme. This here is just hodgepodgey.
I hit the thousand-word mark a while back. Why can’t I write this quickly when under pressure? Oh, right. Because I actually want it to be well-written and flow well.
I also mentioned a while back how I was done writing. Apparently not. Meh. What’s new?
I think I might really be done this time, though. Check the URL, and have a nice day.
I had a great four-day weekend. Here’s hoping you did, too :)
Well, folks, it’s a new year, and we at MDR would like to thank you, the community, for making this one of our best yet. As always, we plan to make 2011 even better.
We have big plans for MDR over the coming year. First off, we’re rapidly applying our final polishes for the big day in June when we finally come out of beta and push out MDR 1.0.RC1. We’ll then eagerly listen to your feedback, apply a few more changes, and hopefully be ready by Fall 2011 to release a stable version and ship it off to college, where we plan to greatly expand our audience and hopefully get a better feel for the 2012 release should look like. It’s a work in progress, after all, and we hope to be able to continue improving MDR for a long time to come :)
The 1.0.beta.12 release has some really neat features and polishes that we know y’all have been waiting for:
Thanks again for being a fantastic community. We had a blast putting together this release, and hope to be able to continue to serve you in the coming year. Happy 2011, all!
Inherently pointless coding challenges just to stretch the brain :)
Yay! Have fun, and let me see what you come up with :D Tip for the non-filesystem solutions: don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. On the filesystem solutions, it’s cooler if it works regardless of what the file is named, but not every language necessarily supports that.
If you’d like some spoilers, here are my answers in Ruby. If you’re genuinely interested in trying this, though, I’d recommend resisting looking at these for a good 24 hours, and then to only look one at a time, just in case you’re inspired upon seeing the general principle :)
You may note that my answers to 3 and 4 cheat ever so slightly, since the problem isn’t very well-defined ;)
Have fun!
When I rise each morning
I often imagine that
I’m famous
I prepare for the long day ahead
Put on my glasses, brush my teeth
And exit
They take me for a day of pampering
And make me try on new outfits
They insist
We arrive at the party
I’m not sure that
I fit in
I’m a little bit concerned, with good reason
They seem to be a little
Bit tipsy
Don’t stop, make it pop
DJ, blow my speakers up
Tonight, I’mma fight
‘Til we see the sunlight
Tick tock on the clock
But the party don’t stop.
No.
I get it now.
Waking up at 6 makes me crash at 3. Right. That seems familiar.
One more week, please?
I was facing an issue with the IE6-7 box model, so I made the traditional fix: set the width as including the padding. Nope, that just messed up something else.
Turns out that IE uses a better box model if you use a doctype declaration (I only recently got actually good enough at web dev to actually know to use one), so that solved part of it. But it also turns out that its better box model still has some other flaws, such as a child element’s width set at 50% counts the parent element’s padding in that 50%, meaning that they won’t actually both fit on one line.
Old IEs, if you must fail epically, at least do so consistently. Eagerly looking forward to your extinction.
Try G-G the book.