Adventure Rocket Ship

A question on the Faceache about hackery started me wondering about what I've managed to miss by not having, er, any CS qualifications.

On the other hand, I do have a pile of Useful Books - K&R (pre-ANSI), K&R (post-ANSI), Cheswick & Bellovin, the Lions book, Stevens (Advanced programming), the Pickaxe book, Zaks/6502, various O'Reillys and, er, Reliable data-structures in C. (It was the 80s. That sort of thing was allowed.)

However, I think I'm missing one or more about proper Rubyish object-orienteering. Maybe I should re-read the Pickaxe book.

I have just been grovelling round the back of the computer bench with the narrow vacuum attachment that generates extra suction. Or makes all the right noises to convince one that extra suction is being developed and is thus the correct implement to use for such jobs. That specific job being 'clean out the inside of the PC because it has been stopping randomly instead of running for weeks at a time between M$-sponsored restarts, and while you're at it see to the knitted mess of cables and things that have fallen off the back of the bench so there's slightly less crap for the fans in the PC to collect and thus delay the inevitable repeat of this unpleasant expedition.'

It's dark down the back of that there bench, so as an aid to being able to see things, I gaffered a Maglite (small) sized LED torch underneath the narrow vacuum attachment that may or may not generate extra suction, thus giving me a free hand to dig things out of the way.

While unwrapping the gaffer, it came to me that I had just invented the tactical vacuum cleaner.

Obviously what is required to persuade MEN to do more cleaning is a matt-black vacuum powered by something like the blower motor from a CDC Hawk, with a range of accessories that come in a Zero Halliburton-style case and snap together with really loud clicks. All of the business ends should be fitted with Picatinny rails, and there should be a variety of extra-cost 'tactical' and 'special ops' bolt-ons.

Elsewhere, pruning. Knackered.

For $reasons, I've given libeljournal.com something of a shoeing. Since it's on Gradwell, which comes with a shell and, er, that's yer lot matey, and I make tea for people who have to support Wordpress (actually, I looked at some of the code. Oh. Dear.), and I used to have a Moveable Type install which got defaced because of some shoddy PHP (probably. It was a long time ago.) I crufted something up in Octopress and someone else's wonky theme.

The internals of that theme need a little more work.

Actually, given it's Ruby, that'll be reasons.blame_sf

Bloody javascript is still horrible, mind.

Those of you out there who (have ambitions to) write SF and/or fantasy and who aren't against the idea of having your lives picked up and given a good shake might like to view this: http://www.sff.net/paradise/

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