Sleep Spent

Disclaimer: while I am pretty sure I know what I’m doing, I have been wrong plenty of times before. I think this is a bug, and I think it’s Safari’s fault. Even so, I haven’t ruled out stupidity on my part. :-)

Give this a try:

1. Visit a particular entry in the Fire FAQ
2. Notice that the entry looks like every other entry on the page
3. Now, type http://fire.sf.net/style.css into the address field of the same window/tab and hit return. (This is useful to see the CSS, but any page will do.)
4. For fun, search for “:target” and notice that Safari has not as yet applied the correct style to the dd following the targeted dt
5. Now, click the back button
6. Tadah! Style applied

I haven’t filed a bug on this yet, but I will tomorrow. It’s late!

I am now officially one step closer to graduation. I took the GWR WPE on Tuesday. I was all over that essay. It was on urban sprawl. I managed to find time to either discuss or reference:

• Winston Churchill
• Thomas Jefferson
• The London Eye
• Smokey The Bear

And I still had time to talk for half a page about my childhood in New Hampshire. It was great --- I even got to use the word “penchant!”

For the sake of the other folks, I sure hope they don’t grade on a curve.

I use Macs pretty much exclusively these days, and sometimes I forget just how well thought out and usable the Mac OS is. OS X has gone through its awkward phase, and while there’s still more to do, it is unquestionably at the top of the User Interface heap right now.

An example: Background window manipulation.

This ad may or may not play during the SuperBowl, but it’s great fun to watch anyway:

Bush in 30 Seconds

As the memories of London fade ever so slightly, I find myself down to two Wine Gums. It’s really beginning to sink in. I’ve been eating the candies one at a time for nearly a week now, and yet they’re about to be gone.

I’ll have to hit up Matt or Brian or Tanya for another box, or I may very well go crazy.

When I was in London, I missed seeing Death Cab for Cutie tour. Now that I’m back and their North American tour is done, they’re going overseas!

Bah.

In other news, I saw The Big Lebowski for the first time tonight, and it was fabulous. Matt had been telling me to watch it for some time now, and boy was he right! That’s two good movies in a week. Rawk!

Lots of Physics to do over this (thankfully long) weekend. Best get my rest in preparation for that. But first let me mention that The Anchor Song (mp3) is incredible, and I don’t even know quite why. It’s so unusual! I don’t want it to be Song of the Week, because I’ve already had a Bjork song up relatively recently, and because I’m sure I’ll be able to get some lesser known stuff from KCPR this weekend. But it may be a runner up anyway. :-)

Give ‘er a listen.

I think I’m going to enjoy this Tech Writing class. At first, I thought it would be difficult --- I don’t know why, but I did. It may still require some work, but I am sure I’ll be able to get a good grade anyway.

Today in class, the professor (one Mary Forte, pronounced “Mary Forty”) asked for a modification of a sentence. She wanted us to remove to be, and she said that she particularly liked the way I rewrote it. Score 1 for Nick.

Later on, I noticed that one of her overheads contained this:

E’

Where she meant to use this:

E′

She had an iBook, so after class I showed her where to get the proper punctuation mark.

I swear I don’t mean to do it. Honest! But can I help it if I know the correct punctuation? Can I help it if she likes my sentence structure and word choice?

I can deal with another A this quarter.

I loved this movie.

I had heard nothing but good things about it, and I love Bill Murray, so I wasn’t concerned. I still love the feeling of really enjoying a good film, though.

The editing was very interesting. Scenes would end where you didn’t expect them to; very short clips would be thrown in without explanation; and the camera would briefly switch to things that had nothing other than incidental meaning. For example, Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte were standing together at one point and she looked down at his feet. The camera followed her gaze for two seconds, and we saw his feet in slippers. There wasn’t anything special about the feet. The only reason they were shown was to show the viewer what Charlotte saw when she looked down.

I dig little things like that --- stuff I’m not expecting.

The soundtrack was exceptional, too. Not a song I didn’t like. And everything fit really well too, though it sometimes took a little bit to realize that. Air did several songs, one of which happened to be my favorite from the soundtrack. It’s called “Alone in Kyoto” and it is really peaceful. (The song can be had on Air’s new full-length Talkie Walkie.)

Mike apparently didn’t like the movie, but that’s his problem. This is a fantastic film which you should certainly see.

So what are you waiting for???

I was a bit hasty with my post of Tuesday. Things worked out fine, and I got all the classes I needed. I just had to get a little creative. I’m taking a Physics class for the first time in ages, which means I’ll likely have to break out the integrals again. But it’s only 10 weeks, as I keep telling myself, and then I’m donedonedone!

In other news, I hooked up my phone jack tonight. I no longer have to borrow Jordan’s phone if I want to call someone, which is good for both of us. Now I just have to get a key so I won’t need to keep “breaking in,” and things will be gravy.

I have four classes that I need to graduate. Four. I am currently enrolled in two of them, but through a little bit of my own stupidity (in not getting the correct BIO class) and a heaping helping of bad luck, it looks like I may not be able to get the other two I need this quarter. The two CSc tech electives overlap, of course. And the BIO-151 class is full with a 30 person waiting list. Of course, I figured out that I had problems with all this NOW and not several weeks ago. But it really took calling the Advising Center to get everything straightened out in my mind. When I finally sat down to register/crash the necessary classes, the ugly truth was revealed.

This is the first time I’ve really had a problem with this, and of course it’s the quarter I’m supposed to graduate.

>_<!!!!!!

We’ll see if the BIO prof can get another lab opened, which is the bottleneck. If he does, the lab will still conflict with the Databases class I’m already enrolled in. I’m going to look for another life sciences tech elective, but the fact still remains that I cannot take both Databases and Networks at the same time.

Looks like I could be here another quarter after all....