Driving Like A Java Programmer

This afternoon when I drove home from a retail park I drove the slightly longer way, because I knew it would be easier to turn right out of the other exit and I would have three blocks to cross three lanes of traffic instead of less than one. And as I did that, I thought to myself 'I'm driving like a Java programmer' - that is, it took longer to get home, but it was easier to get there, less stressful and I was less likely to crash. While the average Calgary driver drives like a C programmer. Or maybe an assembly coder. Still, I prefer driving in England where there are higher speed limits and less potholes, traffic lights, four way stops and snow. And where I own a Golf GTI instead of just a GL. And I get to drive it again next week, 'cos that's when I go home. But I'll be back in Calgary sometime next year - once it starts to get less cold.

Sudoku Solver

This afternoon I wrote a sudoku solver in Prolog. I haven't written a Prolog programme since I was at university nearly ten years ago, so it's a bit of a brute force attack really. I tested it on small grids to start with and it worked ok, but on a full sudoku so far it's taken three hundred and ninety-eight minutes and hasn't returned a result. I'll leave it going overnight, but if it hasn't worked it out by morning I'm giving up. Since I have no desire to learn how to code in Prolog properly. I could probably write something in Java to solve it in a few seconds. (That is, the solving would take a few seconds, not the writing.)

I'm Engaged

I got engaged a week ago yesterday. I haven't blogged about it until now because I wanted to tell people personally first. But it's official - I'm engaged to Naomi and will be marrying her here in Calgary next July. Hooray!

SUSE's KHelpCenter

I just accidentally hit F1 while in konqueror, and instead of the ugly help centre I usually see when I do that, I saw this. At first I thought SUSE had replaced the help centre with their own manuals, but then I realised they'd just changed the style of KDE's help pages. It's amazing how much different a bit of styling can make. It makes the help centre look a lot more friendly and helpful, and I might actually use it in future. Which is silly I know, because it still has the same content! I guess I subconsciously think 'these must be professionally written, useful help files. I will do well here', because it looks good, whereas before I was thinking 'these help files are geeky files. I'm not reading these. I'm going to Azerbaizhan'.

Shocking

My Wacom tablet has always been a little unstable on my computer. If I unplug it and replug it in I have to restart X. Sometimes I knock the cable and it makes linux think it was unplugged, and I have to restart X. And now, since coming to Canada, sometimes I get a little too much static on me and it zaps the tablet, and I have to restart X.

But I've found a way to avoid restarting X. At last! I knew it should be possible, because it said it was in the linuxwacom documentation, but I've never been able to before. And just now when my tablet got zapped again I tried to recompile the evdev module, but found that in SUSE it's not compiled as a module, so I can't. And then I saw that in SUSE they already, apparently, have the modifications compiled in anyway. Strange that my tablet doesn't reconnect then. So I unplugged it, removed the wacom module from memory and replugged it in. Still no joy. So I switched to a VT and then back to X and look - my cursor is moving again!

Now all I need to do is see if it's possible to write a script which will do all that automatically. Except I'd rather it re-enabled the pointer in X without switching to a VT first.

SUSE 10

I installed SUSE 10 last week. The day afterwards my backlight broke, so I've been unable to play with it. It now seems to be working if I keep the brightness right down, but I'll have to buy a new tube soon.

However, SUSE 10 is great - everything just works. Well, everything except multimedia, but after installing a few packman packages it's running like a dream. It boots and logs in far faster than it used to, and the gnome stuff seems to be integrated with KDE better than before, so when I run gimp and inkscape it's not quite such a chore any more. I'm gradually being converted to using Krita instead, but at the moment gimp is still the winner.

For anyone that's interested in the rest of my life: Calgary seems like a nice enough place. They do a lots of things in a strange way over here, but I'm getting used to it. It's great to be around Naomi again after her six months working on a cruise ship. And her cable internet seems to be a six meg line. Nice! I should be getting myself a VW Golf in a week or so - hopefully before it starts to snow too much here.

I Love AJAX

I know it's not in fashion to love AJAX at the moment if you're a real programmer, but I do. Why? Because it's such a cobbled together heap of junk, and everyone is using it. And everyone else is going 'this is rubbish, let's think of something better', and I reckon before too long someone will actually design a proper solution. All because we have AJAX, which sucks, and I love it.