The last few days, I've been reading up on good programming practices, design patterns, object oriented thinking, and how to draw arms, legs and breasts. When later I went back to look at my code, I was somewhat horrified. First of all, there were no breasts in sight. Second, some of the modules were getting a little too friendly with each other. So I've spent most of today trying to rewrite some of the more inappropriately intertwined modules, if they can even be called modules any more. Is an octopus having sex with another octopus still an octopus? It's definitely still half of two octopi, but visualizing separating one out might just give you that aneurysm you've been saving for something more special. Not to mention you might distract the lovers and wind up as part of the brainteaser. The only sane thing to do is to kill them both and start over, using chunks of their dead bodies as raw material.
Turns out, when you've been building stuff for months, it's hard to rewrite it all in the span of a couple of hours. It's kind of like a second pregnancy is at best twice as short as the first; after that you get into all sorts of relativistic paradoxes like Einstein himself showing up to cram that baby back up your vagina, after which one of the twins turns out five years older than the other. I took special relativity in college, I know what I'm talking about.
Hmm, I don't know if it was something I said or wrote or thought, but as soon as I stopped typing a second ago, I knocked a cup of warm water right into my crotch. It didn't feel half bad for the first 5 seconds, but now it feels...wet. And clingy. I may have to take off my pants and put them on backwards.
Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Superday #30
The 30 day supertrial is officially over in ninety two words, no, eighty nine words, no, eighty six words...if there were only some way to write it down without changing it...damn observer effect. I'd draw a picture but I don't want to be charged with going over quota for drawing today.
Success all around I'm afraid, no way to break it gently. The supersummary:
Pushups: at 200 pushups a day, the max number of push-ups I could squeeze out per set went up from 37 to 53. It still surprises me every time though when I hit 40 and still have a few more in me before having to take a deep breath and start bouncing my pecs off the floor to make it up off the ground on the last couple. I wish there were some way to skip the first 45 and just do the last back-crunching, eyeball-popping, vein-dilating, sphincter-cramping 7 or 8. Do pushups on one hand at a time maybe? Or do Tenacious D style push-ups?
Drawing: still an effort to do 20 minutes in a row...oof. The cartooning book made it slightly more interesting though.
French: piece of cake, I can study it hours at a time. Little Nicolas is hilarious.
Knots: fun in the beginning and then boring and forgettable after the wonder wears off. Will review though.
Blogging: highly enjoyable and never gets old, like looking at like myself in the mirror.
In other news...
My newest student is taking her IELTS this weekend. I've prepared her twice a week two hours at a time for a month now but I'm not sure the impact on her English has been big enough. She's still a bit behind ("under" somehow doesn't make sense) that hump; she knows tons of English but can't get it out of her mouth unless I'm holding it pried open with a pair of garden pryers (priers? pry-openers?).
I noticed today that English is the only language I know that capitalizes "I." Are English-speakers the cockiest cocks on the planet?
And the last knot of the trial is...The Monkey Fist:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
I wish the one I made looked even remotely like the one in the picture. Alas, it looks more like a monkey tied into a knot and then fluffed up slightly with a shotgun blast.
Success all around I'm afraid, no way to break it gently. The supersummary:
Pushups: at 200 pushups a day, the max number of push-ups I could squeeze out per set went up from 37 to 53. It still surprises me every time though when I hit 40 and still have a few more in me before having to take a deep breath and start bouncing my pecs off the floor to make it up off the ground on the last couple. I wish there were some way to skip the first 45 and just do the last back-crunching, eyeball-popping, vein-dilating, sphincter-cramping 7 or 8. Do pushups on one hand at a time maybe? Or do Tenacious D style push-ups?
Drawing: still an effort to do 20 minutes in a row...oof. The cartooning book made it slightly more interesting though.
French: piece of cake, I can study it hours at a time. Little Nicolas is hilarious.
Knots: fun in the beginning and then boring and forgettable after the wonder wears off. Will review though.
Blogging: highly enjoyable and never gets old, like looking at like myself in the mirror.
In other news...
My newest student is taking her IELTS this weekend. I've prepared her twice a week two hours at a time for a month now but I'm not sure the impact on her English has been big enough. She's still a bit behind ("under" somehow doesn't make sense) that hump; she knows tons of English but can't get it out of her mouth unless I'm holding it pried open with a pair of garden pryers (priers? pry-openers?).
I noticed today that English is the only language I know that capitalizes "I." Are English-speakers the cockiest cocks on the planet?
And the last knot of the trial is...The Monkey Fist:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
I wish the one I made looked even remotely like the one in the picture. Alas, it looks more like a monkey tied into a knot and then fluffed up slightly with a shotgun blast.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
They should have progress bars available as titles
Still on track as of yesterday. The real test will be Saturday and Sunday when I have class most of the day and am forced to do pushups at my student's houses to avoid killing myself in the evening. It's hard to fit pushup sets into my schedule as my mom has inculcated all these health-nut rules into my head: don't exercise for an hour after you eat, don't watch TV while you sleep, pull down your pants before you sit down on the toilet, etc. And I'm not so sure what constitutes a meal. Does a bag full of candy count? Or is that not digested, just sweated out...that must how the Blue Man Group preps for their shows.
I have noticed a few benefits already of this new lifestyle. I can wear far less clothes in the room because the pushups keep me warm for long after each set. If I space them out just right, I can probably heat the room more effectively than the fake Chinese heater with its fake heat.
Yesterday's knot, the bowline:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
Not too difficult for magic hands.
Today's, the slip knot:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
Even easier than yesterday's. But I browsed pictures of the more advanced knots and I'm feeling in equal parts confident and screwed. Does beginner's luck restart for each new knot?
French is going smoothly. It's also producing lots of feelings I haven't had in a while. During today's hour, I looked over about a million vocabulary words and realized that I know none of them, which made me feel very Bill-and-Ted-esque. Then I felt excited, as in: "I'm going to know all these words...some day!" Then I felt motivated to study. Then I felt nerdy for feeling motivated to study. Then I felt excited about feeling nerdy as there's very little opportunity to be nerdy in China; people here prefer eating, and when they're not doing that--drinking. Then I felt nostalgic for MIT, where nerdism is both church and state. Then I felt guilty for living in the past. Then I ate some candy and felt the mini-heartattacks coursing through my teeth. Then I had to go to class.
Oh yea, drawing. Went OK yesterday, time passed a bit faster than the day before, but the results are still very disappointing. It's hard for me to draw what I see instead of what I know. I see a bowl, I know it's made of circles and I have to struggle to draw the squished ellipses instead. Hmm, maybe I should just draw all round objects from head on. "Excuse me sir, can you sit with the top of your head facing me?"
I have noticed a few benefits already of this new lifestyle. I can wear far less clothes in the room because the pushups keep me warm for long after each set. If I space them out just right, I can probably heat the room more effectively than the fake Chinese heater with its fake heat.
Yesterday's knot, the bowline:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
Not too difficult for magic hands.
Today's, the slip knot:
image borrowed from animatedknots.com
Even easier than yesterday's. But I browsed pictures of the more advanced knots and I'm feeling in equal parts confident and screwed. Does beginner's luck restart for each new knot?
French is going smoothly. It's also producing lots of feelings I haven't had in a while. During today's hour, I looked over about a million vocabulary words and realized that I know none of them, which made me feel very Bill-and-Ted-esque. Then I felt excited, as in: "I'm going to know all these words...some day!" Then I felt motivated to study. Then I felt nerdy for feeling motivated to study. Then I felt excited about feeling nerdy as there's very little opportunity to be nerdy in China; people here prefer eating, and when they're not doing that--drinking. Then I felt nostalgic for MIT, where nerdism is both church and state. Then I felt guilty for living in the past. Then I ate some candy and felt the mini-heartattacks coursing through my teeth. Then I had to go to class.
Oh yea, drawing. Went OK yesterday, time passed a bit faster than the day before, but the results are still very disappointing. It's hard for me to draw what I see instead of what I know. I see a bowl, I know it's made of circles and I have to struggle to draw the squished ellipses instead. Hmm, maybe I should just draw all round objects from head on. "Excuse me sir, can you sit with the top of your head facing me?"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
