my day in review (wednesday 10apr2002)

[chris raettig <chris@raettig.org>]

isn't a rail just an inverted rut? i heard somebody say that, but i've
forgotten who it was. my life feels like it has gone off the rails a
little bit of late. i dont for one moment consider that to be a bad thing.

if i can risk mashing my metaphors i'd also like to say that i'm on
an unusually twisty emotional rollercoaster, too. 

there are so many things going on. i'm enthused by a million different
projects. i'm in no danger of getting bored. every time i sit down
at a keyboard (that happens a lot in my life) i'm feeling the excitement
of infinite possibility in a way i'd almost forgotten existed. when i 
tap open a new terminal (i do that quite a bit too) i have to choose
between a wide assortment of projects and todo-items to work on,
all of which i'm wildly motivated by. 

i have been reinvested. my passion and excitement about the times
we're living through have been rejuvenated. i wasn't wrong when
i said this was going to be an interesting year. 

lets all kick some ass.

there is some sense of foreboding in the back of my mind. a healthy
reminder that unhappiness is a constant threat. that things can go
wrong quickly, and sometimes they do. i'm a worrier, so that feeling
is inevitable. you live with it most of the time. 


today (wednesday) i worked for a while on optimising the crm system
in use at showstudio. programming new graphing tools to help us
better visualise the data on our site visitors that we already hold. 
it felt positive and productive. i then spent a couple of hours
making a start on the virtual browser test suite. i've had a lot
of great feedback about that. including the suggestion that i use
xvfb (x-windows virtual framebuffers). i hadn't even considered
that, and it is a much more efficient way of processing requests
within the unix client. essentially you can create an arbitrary
number of virtual framebuffers, and target application windows
at them. you can then grab a screenshot of a particular virtual
framebuffer. in a nutshell this means that i can process lots of
requests in parallel, limited only by processing power and bandwidth.
i'm certain that the windows and mac client ports wont be so 
straightforward, but its a great start. 

my hidden agenda, of course, is to promote a greater awareness of
how pages render on unix systems, and in a wider range of browsers
and environments. the now almost-complete unix client alone is
a worthwhile project in my opinion, therefore. 


at lunchtime i met up with howard. [http://www.hball.net]. 
i first met howard through gareth, who i know better as 'shaka'. 
the zulu overlord. i haven't seen gareth in more than four years. 
perhaps seven years ago i first met shaka. or at least, i read
his self-description. we became good friends on an internet mud
game called sleepless nights. a place i spent hundreds of hours
in what i now feel qualified to call my youth. shaka had introduced
me to the game, and i only met him face to face a couple of years later.
howard was later to become a regular at the seadog inn, the 
busy pub which formed the centerpiece of virtual life in the
virtual world of sleepless nights. 

when i first moved to london i met up with howard in person, and we have
kept in contact online since then. the last time i met howard in the
flesh was two years ago, in the summertime. we went skating and
i kept falling over. 

today we exchanged business cards and had a very interesting chat 
covering a lot of subjects close to our hearts. it felt good
to see an old friend again, and i must now renew my acquaintance
with shaka, given that he now lives within a hundred meters of 
the studio from which i work. 


this evening i was supposed to be going to listen to a talk my
colleague danny brown was giving at the ica. but when it came
to it i had a much greater desire to return home and keep
working on things of my own. 


my flatmate is going on holiday this weekend. he leaves directly
from work tomorrow evening and returns on monday. what this should
mean is non-stop drunken debauchery and partying until he gets back.

i doubt it will happen, though.