Playing catchup
08 Aug 2004Well, sort of playing catchup. I’m figuring that I hadn’t been posting much the past few days, and posts will again diminish in frequency in the coming week, so whilst I’ve got time, I’m on a bit of a posting spree.
So, yesterday was a supreme waste of time. An enjoyable waste, but a waste, nonetheless. The day ended up being a bit of a write-off, actually: my team was playing soccer at 12:30, which normally would have been an inconvenience, but not too much so. Except for the fact that we were playing in Bowral. Which, for those who aren’t acquainted with the geography of the areas surrounding Sydney, is approximately two hours away (from the City centre… it’s about 1:45 to 1:30 from my place of residence).
Except, that didn’t mean that I lost the time between 10:30 and 3:30 – due to circumstances, and the departure times of certain buses going to Chevalier, I left at 7:15 from the city.
The trip down was okay; I finished a book, and started another, and realised that all the work I’d brought to do was fairly impossible… something which may be attributed to my failure to remember a pen. Good work, Josh.
Time passed uneventfully until our game at 12:30, which was a lot of fun… we had a mildly penalty-happy ref., but that’s okay… he didn’t quite choke on the whistle, although we were concerned for a while there. Final score was 1-0 to Chev, but they were a really good team to play against (they were really friendly, we all had a laugh at the ref ;)).
The trip back really sucked, because although I did have some more stuff to read, the incessant stupidity of “Bean” rendered it all throughly unproductive. And the movie sucked, too. Pfft.
On another note, that was our last game for the season! Eeep! Actually, that was probably the last game of soccer I shall ever play for St. Andrews (unless I magically find more time next year to the point where I don’t mind losing an afternoon a week and Saturdays for sport). Now that’s scary.
I really need to start jogging again, regularly, soon.
I also need to re-code this website. Because I want the usability, not because it is a task I will particularly enjoy. It’s just little things, like being able to specify an Abstract for posts, instead of having it manually truncated at a certain length. And proper comment administration (my goodness, I haven’t even bothered to upload a script to DO that yet – I’m currently just using a web administration utility which hooks directly into the database!). And mod_rewrite support, so Google will finally index this thing properly, instead of just linking generically to the newspage an article is on (as opposed to the article permalink itself). And custom, page-specific styles administered from within the CMS panel. Not to mention direct and tighter integration between the administration panels for the CMS and news subsystem.
And people wonder why I dislike coding. ARGH!!!
I want to be bored. Not because a task is boring, but simply because I have nothing to do. Or at least, nothing that I am MEANT to be doing. I could deal with that kind of boredom.
I’ve currently got four assessments pending, with another likely to be announced within the next several days. And then there is a web project or two which are… there. And then, in five weeks (I think), yearly exams hit. I really want to be bored.
Bleh!
A question to the masses: Is it worth my while moving this website over to a mainstream blogging system? Roll-your-own is neat and all, but what if they offer a level of functionality and integration with the greater WWW that rolling-your-own can’t hope to match without a significant investment of time and resources? My biggest qualm here is the desire to move content over NOW, so that if any manual processing must occur (unlikely – I am fairly confident that a script or three could dump data into the appropriate tables sans manual intervention), then it will be at a minimum.
Perhaps I am brain-damaged? I’m right handed, afterall. Making use of faculties resident to the other sphere is something which is illegal, apparently ;)
I prefer L+D and the satisfaction of standards and other such academic concerns over coding, I think. Development isn’t holding the interest now that it did some months ago.
Appreciation of work diminishes motivation, I think. If I were to open-source my hard drive today, then it is unlikely that any further code would come forth to be released building upon that work. Because others would extend it, take it beyond what I could, or would, or something. And then code fragmentation occurs.
There is another problem, even without fragmentation of actual code occurring. Conceptual fragmentation – usability, and coding principle division. Not even division, necessarily. I can’t pursue multiple coding targets within the one application (or project, to take a holistic approach) simultaneously… at least, not easily. Whilst this isn’t anyone else’s fault, it does substantially impact productivity, and motivation to complete work.
“Where do I start!?” – it’s like waking up from a six-month long coma the morning before an exam, and wondering what you will be tested on. Personally, I want to go straight back into that coma. It’s not so much that learning (mixing metaphors here) is prohibitive in itself, but simply that the TIMING and sheer VOLUME of goals (or content, in our exam example) is apparently too great.
Discussion is good. I like discussion. I also like feature freeze. And discussion BEFORE the commencement of a project, with established guidelines as to what is ALREADY, and what is to CHANGE, and what is to be DEVELOPED. Defining what is ALREADY, starting DEVELOPING, and then defining what is to CHANGE is something which shall create problems. If only because the development has passed the point at which a change, had it been discussed initially, would be implemented.
This is a part of the frustration behind coding and development for me – but then, it can’t be the only thing, as I am not inclined to develop free of the constraints of defined projects, even if that definition occurs in an appropriate manner!
I think I’ve lost the point of this post somewhere a few hundred lines up. This really belongs in the much-neglected “My Ramblings” section, seeing that much of this was the formulation of my thoughts in text. I’m trying to figure out WHY, and apparently failing. But that’s okay. This all provides (professional) insight, and is therefore probably more valuable than any private journal or Ramblings file which I may or may not keep.
The frustration remains. I still don’t know why. Looking to place blame elsewhere probably isn’t assisting matters; I should have made some thoughts on development goals clear sooner, or just said “No.” or something. I just need to set the apparent enormity of everything aside, take about 300 steps back, and appraise it as an insignificant stack of paper sitting in the great carpark of life.
Strange image? Yes, well, I saw that today and thought of life at the moment… I laughed. Had I a camera at that time, I would have captured it. Hahaha. Proper image uploading and inclusion is yet another feature to add here.
*Converses with self* STOP! Okay. *Directs attention back to post*
I think I’ll go and attack some work which is due tomorrow. My work ethic at the minute isn’t exactly helping this situation. Neither, come to think of it, is this webpage. I don’t really want to delete it, because it’s too much fun to write on. I won’t delete it. Not again. Oh, that’s irony. Deletion itself now brings bad memories? Hah.
This has definitely decimated into rambling territory. I’m stopping now. The next post shall come… when I next allow myself to procrastinate long enough to write, but not long enough that a cookie be consumed. ;)