Author archives: Mike
Oy, graph layout code takes forever (For any sort of general case)
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Snaking.
So, beyond some work on administrivia, spent the bulk of the day working on building graph-displaying mechanisms. For example, wrote a method that, given a start and end point of a range, generates major and minor grid lines within the range. It does that by using the log10 of the number, rounded and decremented to ...
Poor guy, who could ever make ends meet on that salary... (Sometimes you just want to smack people upside the head)
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Vindaloo.
So, turns out that the head of NASA (a Bush government appointee) is resigning because he needs more money to put his three children through University. He was brought in to institute financial restraint and reasonable bugetting to the institution, btw.
Um, when did it become impossible to put three children through school (for a ...
Primary purpose of a blog... (Social awkwardness or feelings of guilt?)
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Vindaloo.
Rosey got a brief call from Golnar (trying to buy Rosey's car), so I got to talk to her (on a cell phone, of all devices (I seldom use them, not having one)). Turns out that she was feeling guilty for having read parts of my blog (I assume not the whole 9 months of ...
Solstice dinner goes fairly well (Mole and curry and doughnuts! Oh my!)
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Vindaloo.
Had 6 people over for the annual Solstice dinner. Much of the evening was spent answering questions from "The Question Book", so I'm sure everyone learned far more about one another than they really wanted to know :) .
Simon brought his former gf, Lia. Too bad Natasha didn't come, the two of them would, ...
Needing a package for doing graph-layout (Not a graphing package, a graph-layout package...)
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Spent a few hours today trying to figure out the 'graph' views for Cinemon. Problem is, the graphs need to be active, that is, moderately interactive, with all sorts of hyperlinks from within them. Graphing packages are focused more on static graphs, so they don't seem to allow for specifying interactive features of the graph ...
Just in case she tries to claim she was entirely bored (Tim provides photographic evidence...)
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Vindaloo.
Tim, as many of you know, is quite a good photographer. Unfortunately the lighting last night was pretty bad, still, he managed to snap this shot of Marjan so we can use it against her, should she ever sue us to get those 3.5 hours of her life back again.
That almost worked (Too keyed up to sleep, so did a few hours of work on Cinemon)
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Snaking.
Couldn't sleep again, so I spent a couple of hours on Cinemon after that last post. Nothing too complex, just cleaning things up so that "dangerous" options don't show up and pointless nesting can't occur.
D'Arcy hasn't called yet (though some jerk with a fax machine phoned at 7:55am this morning), so I'm thinking I'll ...
Convincing them to show up is 90% of the battle (Marjan saves me from being the lonely bachelor...)
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Snaking,
Vindaloo.
Tonight was the Cain Gang/Vextech Christmas party. As you loyal readers will no doubt remember, I invited Marjan (Shiva's cousin). Wonder of wonders, she showed up! (Loyal readers will know that I have an abysmal record with having women cancel on me, often at the last moment).
1055 (name of the restaurant) was about what ...
Housekeeping before the storm (My day in major-change preparations...)
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I spent most of the day trying to clean up old code that has been gradually getting cruftier as the system evolves. This code is all having to do with the "hierarchy" system, particularly the network hierarchy. This was the first hierarchy written, and it's the most active hierarchy, so its nowhere near as regular ...
Ah, the joy of a plan working out (Minimal changes to get the functionality working... even if it is ugly)
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Been working on a feature I came up with a few weeks ago for the last couple of days. It's basically working now, even though there turned out to be a few places where I'd glossed over some (ugly) complexity in my memory of the system. Going to try to eliminate that ugliness so that ...
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.