January 11, 2009
January 4, 2009 – January 10, 2009
Well, I spent most of this week sick with a head cold that knocked me down for a few days. Regardless, here goes my list for the week. One of these entries is sarcastic. Try to guess which one.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death by Black Hole.
An incredibly interesting and funny interview with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He talks about the process of dying in a black hole, defines one of my new favourite words, “spaghettification”, and tells the audience about the asteroid that may destroy the Pacific Coast. A fascinating discussion about some terrible things that may happen to the Earth.
“Ninety nine percent of all species that ever existed are now extinct. That is not the signature of a planet that is in love with life.”
Learning that none of my JavaScript works in Internet Explorer 6.
My boss went to Cambodia for two weeks after Christmas. The day she returns, we are to present her with a full, bug-free copy of our latest project. On Wednesday, we discovered that next to none of our Javascript works in Internet Explorer 6. I know it was rather remiss of us not to test, but we’re not the best at browser-compatibility testing.
Anyways, IE6 is a mystifying piece of badness. There are lots of things in it that make no sense at all, like how select boxes are drawn by the operating system, and not the browser. What this means is that modal dialog boxes, as well as mouseover-style menus, don’t draw themselves on top of those elements. Web 2.0 style applications use these sorts of elements quite often. The solution? Something called an iframe shim, which makes no sense at all. I have so far wasted a number of days attempting to make these elements play well together. We need to find a new way to draw modal dialog boxes, drop down style menus and a calendar widget. Before tomorrow morning at 830 am. I’m not expecting that to go well.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl
I loved watching Billie Piper as Rose Tyler in Doctor Who, so I decided to download the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl to see if she could really act or not, and I learned that she can. It is an odd cross between a comedy, a drama, and a softcore porn. I have now seen far too much of Billie Piper’s body, but I still found the show excellent. Her character is quite compelling and I enjoyed watching the two parts of her personality conflicting with each other. I would recommend this show to a couple of friends, though I’m not sure if it would be my friends who are obsessed with Doctor Who or not.
Getting our spare room set up.
Alan and I recently housed a friend of ours for about four or five months. In that time, he stayed in our spare room, which had formerly been our computer room. Since our computers were nice and cozy in their new home, and we wanted to hide our TV a bit more, we turned our spare room into a TV room. We put the TV and our gaming systems in the closet so we can hide it when we have guests, and the spare room now has our DVD shelf, our plastic shelving units, and our futon. The living room is fantastically empty, and will make a great space for dance contests and Twister. Or our cozy chair can go there for our new reading corner.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Internet Discoveries & Bandwagons, Life |
January 4, 2009
December 28, 2008 – January 3, 2009
New Year’s Eve.
I was blessed with the ability to work from home on New Year’s Eve, which allowed me the opportunity to plan and execute a lovely celebration of the completion of another revolution around the sun.
On Tuesday night, I stopped at IKEA and picked up some wine glasses, candlesticks and candles, and two bottles of cheap wine at the LCBO. I went grocery shopping the next day and picked up a shrimp ring and flowers among other things, and spent the afternoon furiously cleaning the apartment. When Alan arrived home from work, we snacked on shrimp and some Pilsbury rolls and cooked up a very nice Beef with Broccoli and some mixed veggies. It was a really nice, quiet evening, which we don’t get very many of. We were both in bed asleep before midnight. Alan and I celebrated our five year anniversary on New Year’s Day by relaxing, napping and playing video games. New Year’s Day is kind of an annoying day to have an anniversary because so few places are open.
Hanging out with Brad and Lem.
Last night our friends Brad and Lem came over for dinner. We drank Brad and Lem’s wedding wine, had lasagna, caesar salad and rolls, and Lem brought a delicious cake. We played Wii games and watched Will It Blend? On YouTube, then went on a fruitless hunt for Wii games to rent. After we returned to the apartment, we played Killer Bunnies and The Quest For The Magic Carrot, and Trivial Pursuit. It was a fun night.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
A couple of months ago, either Courtney or Kat recommended I watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to sit down a watch it. I was a little skeptical, and the show definitely has its flaws, but for the most part it’s quite good, especially the effects. I think Lena Headey, who plays Sarah Connor is a little stiff and robotic, especially in the first season, but the rest of the actors do a good job, and Summer Glau, who plays Cameron is excellent. I could do without the Heroes-style voiceovers at the beginning and end of the episodes, but that’s just a little quibble.
Invoice Entry Interface.
At work right now, I’m working on a fairly large chunk of a rewriting of our Business Intelligence tool. This is the set of screens where our employees enter invoices into the system. It’s very important that this part of the application works well, and I’m finding it more involved and challenging than a lot of the things I’ve been asked to do in the last month or so. My goal is to have all of the UI, including AJAX, Javascript and form validation written and debugged by the end of the week.
Getting Back to Real Life.
Christmas was fun, but it’s really nice to get back to your own apartment, sleep in your own bed, under your own sheets, and wake up to your own alarm clock. We were gone from the 24th to the 28th, and it was a busy time, with lots of people around, which isn’t something Alan and I are used to any more. Our apartment seemed like a quiet refuge after that busy time.
Honorable Mentions:
Making it to the gym every day I went to work. Christmas at Uncle Gary’s. Remembering the answers Alan’s passport hints. Doctor Who: The Next Doctor [the Christmas Episode, not Matt Smith]. Finishing Foundation. Will It Blend?
Shannon Patterson, filed under Life |
February 24, 2008
I have recently become interested in viewing some of the original Doctor Who stuff. Some of it is just awful. The Underwater Menace is a perfect example of this. First off, video only exists for the third of the four parts of this story. The other parts are simply black and white photos with descriptive text. The other thing is that the story makes next to no sense. It’s campy, but not awesome. I will not watch it again, but I will pass it on to Courtney to watch.
I spent my weekend doing very domestic and boring things: grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, etc. Alan and I are trying to make a copycat recipe for Tony Roma’s Kickin Shrimp appetizer. We know it has mayo and this awesome Asian sweet chili sauce, but beyond that, we’re still experimenting. Also made a chicken and banana muffins on Saturday, and today chicken noodle soup, and apple crumble.
I am reading my first Arthur C. Clarke book, and so far it’s quite good. Will post a short review when I finish it.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Life |