99 Bottles of REGEX on the wall

Coolest. Code. Evar.

Telephones are fantastic

At making one cringe at one’s own awkwardness more than should be necessary. Regardless as to how premeditated and planned a call may be. Still, it’s better than rubbing ink in old wounds (literally). Funny how one can progress from bizarre excitement at a motif of enthusiasm (enthusiasm itself notwithstanding without some kind of idol to represent it), to sadness in an optimistic way but without any means of reciprocal communication that once induced sadness (but maintained optimism) for too long such that other awkwardness may ensue, to nearly forgetting that in studying something too awesome (I fear too much in an academic sense), only to return to quiet guilt at not having reciprocated previously later in that same general sense of chronology (balanced against a sense of geographical guilt in an abstract kind of concern for those around whilst being, in mind, completely elsewhere). Then, after all that, in foolishness something transpired that was quickly regretted, but only after some time properly meditating on various stupidities could anything be forthcoming. Hence, it is now Thursday, and Wednesday passed without reply. Thursday will plod onwards, one must suppose, as excitement for study and work and (shock) social interaction is forcibly mustered. Which I suppose is less exciting, then. I would love sponteneity right now but fear it too late… no matter. There will be another time. Oh, and whilst streaming consciousness with only aftwards reflection (I cheated by knowing what I would try to include in advance in the earlier parts, I’m sorry), what was going through their heads when they proclaimed eternity? When the indifferent proclaimed eternity? What are they proclaiming? What were they thinking? I want to scream and say what the hell is going on because it’s all so foreign so strange applying a language that isn’t theirs, can’t be theirs; historically has been rejected! But the truths which our grandfathers held are now those which the fighters at the outposts rally against. Oh, yes, very variable. You advocate free-thought then thought-control then secular pluralism then eternity then both at once then you’re not making sense anymore now are you. Are you? I am hardly immune to the allure of rebellion. Ibsen wrote not literature of the revolution per se but veered close to it at times. You… no, of course not. There was no conviction in that gaze. Ephemeral humour of the melancholic variety pervades that being without direction. Oh, Ninevah–do I wish it thus? Pray not. Please not. You, too. Please. It would make certain attachments that much easier to bear; confidence in… well, it is not for me to know anymore. My fault bears heavily enough upon me even though I have thought to have revelled in it. Reviled is closer to how, probably, things should have transpired. Please free me. Preserve them; give them what you have already in power. So far away, now. I can bearly see yet look regardless, squinting to make out something. Look forward. Unconditional unfailing immovable; all I am not. Please end the guilt’s cause.

Photowhat

Oh dear. I’ve finally succumbed to the allure of Photoshop. In one moment just then it all clicked and suddenly the GIMP is vastly inferior. Now I’m going to find myself trying GIMPshop or something ridiculous. Not that it’s ridiculous at all, because the GIMP remains an infinitely faster and ligher-weight program that performs admirably… it’s just not as feature rich.

Please note, above statements should not be taken as constituting a revelation of sudden visual-creativity to the point of designer prodigy: my creativity remains as it always has been (take that as you will; I still think my crowning design achievement would have been the now-passed SC500 theme for this site, sad though that may be).

The straw that broke the camel’s back? Nothing complex or difficult or even unusual. It’s just layer/selection scaling in the GIMP is excruciating when juxtaposed against it’s $900 rival. Sigh. So I might end up purchasing CS2 plus Macromedia stuff under an academic license sometime in the future.

Nvu revisited

I tried Nvu ages back when it was still fairly new (but a while after the fork from Composer) and was pretty uninspired by the whole experience. Just recently I’ve been giving it a whirl for more complicated semantic markup (i.e. tables) and it’s performed admirably! You’ll note in the screenshot the HTML tag view gives you a pretty precise look at what’s going on. I managed things with regular tabbing between HTML tag and Source views (the Source syntax highlighting still isn’t realtime, which is a bit disappointing) — this is really helpful in reducing the time it takes to churn out good quality tables. You can also create unsemantic tables and whatever else with this, but it fixes things fairly readily and has “header” styles inbuilt for TH things, etc. The only thing it really doesn’t seem to want to do even manually is add thead elements, but if you edit them in yourself it won’t try and get rid of them.

Really good (free) tool for certain types of maintenance stuff. If it had a half-decent templating system (ala Dreamweaver Templates, which have got to be pretty simple to implement on top of an existing code base doing all the hard WYSIWYG work, etc.) I’d be seriously considering making more static page templates and handing administration over in a client-side sense using this program. Great stuff, and if you haven’t looked at it for a while/ever, worth considering.

Edit: Maybe it does have a half-decent templating system! I just saw the very prominent Insert → Templates → Insert Editable Area option. Doh, now I have to seriously think about such things. And, upon more serious reflection, the advantages afforded by web-based content management systems are generally too great to ignore. The only case it could be justified is where there’s no budget (or, in the case of volunteer work, no time), in which case chances are the website isn’t too likely to have dynamic requirements, anyway.

Vocational vicissitude

I never thought I’d use my vocational training Information Technology credentials to any great effect, but have discovered otherwise in my first subject this semester (Computers in Education, part of EDUF1019). I [will, on submission of a bundle of photocopied joy (also known as certificate documentation) sitting next to me] be exempt from attendance for the rest of semester until the open-book exam in week eleven. Spectacular.

I don’t particularly believe Certificate III training in Network Administration is particularly relevant to Clarisworks, but no matter! The ramifications of this one HSC subject (and very very little associated effort/work!) are astounding!

Despite all this, some interesting stuff about education-research-specific databases, etcetera, so I might go along next week anyway as the lecturer (facilitator? It’s not a lecture nor particularly a tutorial, so I’m uncertain!) says it’ll be a bit more of the same stuff… after week 2 it’s meant to get into mundanity (important mundanity, I’m sure, but not particularly stimulating if you don’t have to!)

Maybe IT and education/arts aren’t as dichotomous as once thought… hmm. Along that line of thought, looks like Education get all the cool toys! I walked downstairs to level 2 on my way to the Computers in Education thing and there were two guys setting up a room with a Panasonic MX-70, heaps of LCD preview monitors, video distribution amps, audio gear (including valve pre-amps and other such nice thingies), and various other wonderful geeky things. It’s a pretty strange rig for an editing suite, but an even stranger security monitoring setup (like, unbelievably wasteful if that’s what it’s all for!)… but anyway, I’m hoping to figure out what on earth it’s for then spend lots of time in there by whatever means possible! Muwahahahaha.

In other uni-related news, I changed my timetable for this semester around a bit so that I don’t have an English seminar ending at 7pm and can get to The Night Train (and our Wednesday night bible study once that kicks off again in the second half of the semester) without speeding/taxis/killing small children/missing seminars. Which is always a good thing!