Group projects, where 0.95 > 1.00

In our build system, we pull in external sources and try to build them. I recently made some changes to improve how we deal with in-house modifications to the external sources. The fact is, in-house modifications will not successfully apply if they are not applied on to clean external sources. The sources _will_ be clean the first time you build the external, but not the second time since they were made dirty from having in-house changes applied to them the first time. So, since we usually don’t have to try building an extern more than once, 95% of the time everything will be okay. But, 95% is not very good, so I added a line to clean the external sources before trying to patch them. This is sensible. The only drawback is that this put a small dependency on our build system which required that we enable one more built-in extension in our version control tools.

Today, the developer above me just committed a changeset that removed that line I wrote. So, now, if one does not successfully build the external, they not only have to deal with that problem but they will also have to fix our builder or manually clean their sources as the build system will halt after failing to apply our in-house modifications. On the bright side, now we are down one less dependency!

So the lesson learned is that rigour is bad, and cutting corners is good if you can cut down on dependencies (which can be satisfied by adding one line to your .hgrc file) and produce numbers that management will interpret as favourable…

Viral video with Divenire playing in the background …
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NScs_qX2Okk

cow!

http://awesomeness.no-ip.org/cow?file=stegosaurus&text=yaycows!

I have to keep posting. If the intervals between these articles are too vast, the writing style changes too quickly between them and readers will be upset.

Here is a lesson. The fact is, there are a lot of things I really should do but haven’t gotten around to doing. Furthermore, when I am stuck, I can change something and I will be somewhere else. Procrastination is an opportunity.

Over the past few months I think I’ve become more attentive to the effects of my bringing about change. I wonder if it’s important.

Looking back, I suspect I had attitude which reflected both carelessness and intention. I accepted my state and tried to make the best of it. I believed I would, one day, end up where I wanted to be and, in the interim, all I had to do was wait and be myself and really enjoy that. And it worked. But, I don’t think that will work anymore. I think a new dimension has injected itself into my life – or, at least, my imagination of it. There are new colours and feelings that I do not know what to do with. Thoughts about control and cause and effect. There are new ways of thinking about things that I previously had no concern over. I’d like to say that it’s fantastic and it’s brilliant. But, I don’t know what to make of it. Or if that’s even how it works.

A few months ago, someone threw a Slurpee on the back of my car.

Over the weekend, someone cracked a raw egg on the handle of the driver’s door of my car.

And my mom has been scolding me for not liking people very much.

When I was younger, I would cry. Crying was a pretty miserable routine, so, I did not especially appreciate it. When I became older, I realized that having a good cry, separated by eventful intervals of time, was my status quo. It appeared to be a necessary biological process. And I accepted it, not as something I enjoyed; but, like a vaccination, something that was necessary for my health. And then, I stopped crying. And I’ve discovered an appreciation for the luxury of vaccinations.

I guess I’m getting the hang of this facial hair thing.

Clint Mansell is composing for Mass Effect 3.
The Wear Sunscreen song was put on wimp.com. And, it was the “class of 99″ version.
I even heard Ludovico Einaudi on the radio.

On the other hand, Philip Glass was poked fun of on South Park years ago.

In high school, I knew exactly how to secure the future I wanted. And I did that. The mistake was that the future I wanted had no future of its own.

I’ve found that an attitude of skepticism is paramount. In particular, when applied to the perceived value of having a skeptical attitude.

Yesterday, I woke up at 6:17, fell asleep, woke up at 6:24, ate breakfast in front of my computer, took a shower, hurt my back, flailed around/got dressed for work, went outside to my car, cleared off some frost, picked up Chris, drove to school, dropped him off in front of Mattson, arrived at work at 8:01, left work at 14:03, went to school, skimmed a bit of my math textbook, attended class, waited in the lab for Andrew, started programming shortly after 15:50, Andrew arrived some time after 17:20, conversed and exchanged ideas with Andrew, left the lab for my car at 18:01, drove home, ate dinner, watched house, worked on my VM, configured network bridging and port forwarding, read a chapter in a book and a ten page article on the internet for a homework assignment, took a deep breath, went to sleep.