Arse-biscuit

Just joined the 8.5 million strong ranks of those with osteoarthritis. My left hip has been painful every winter for at least the last 12 years (I remember asking people to pull me along corridors by my left leg because it stopped it hurting in my last job - not sure that that was a proper use of HCAs but what is power for if not for abusing?) but this year took to biscuit, the arse-biscuit! So off I trot hobble to the GPs and he rotates it a bit and I wince and he says pain on internal rotation is a classic symptom but to have an x-ray to confirm his diagnosis. Thing is he then starts talking about getting a new hip while I’m still reasonably young... then he looks at my DOB on the screen and does a lovely double-take and says that I’m still young.

What can I say? The beard doesn’t help much but that and the wobbling gait say, “miserable old git”, more clearly than reasonably young man.

Internal metalwork sounds cool in a cyborg sort-of-way but the pain in the meantime is a killer so he prescribes some nice pain killers, thing is I’m somewhat chemically naive (save for real ale) and now I’m floating around like my head is about to hit the ceiling. Had to pull a sicky and I’m hoping that I’ll either get used to them double-quick or go back to Ibuprofen because I’ll be as much use as a chocolate kettle at this rate.

On a different note just bought Metropolis: The Chase Suite by Janelle Monae from Amazon and it’s the mutts! Sort of a poppy sci-fi concept album, puts me in mind of the The Fifth Element.

Will get back to thinking about Java soon, just need to feel a little sorry for myself for a little while first ;-). And get used to being stoned out of my guord as well!

Attribute or Element Categorisation

So I'm playing with the concept of Object Orientated Software thanks to reading the course stuff from the M255, I'm also listening to FLOSS weekly and browsing my feeds when I come across this article about how our brains are hard-wired for categorisation and I get to wondering... The FLOSS episode was cool because it talked a little about imbedding or referencing and how it was basically a matter of choice but that there could be implications now in terms of performance and also further down the road if you were wanting to change things. It'd be quicker to embed in terms of getting at the data but a shed-load harder to change it later if you needed to trawl through loads of documents in order to find each embedded object. It would be slower to reference the data in terms of retrieving it but a shed load easier to alter it further down the road if it was only the one record that'd need changing. At least I think that that was the general idea. Then I got to thinking about XML and and a discussion that I overheard about whether something should be an element or an attribute within a XML hierarchy. So:

<addressBook>
  <address>
    <street>424 Any Road</street>
    <city>Any City</city>
    <county>Countyshire</county>
    <postcode>AB1 2DE</postcode>
  </address>
  ...
</addressBook>

This is an element-centric approach to an XML document whereas this attribute-centric:

<addressBook>
  <address street="424 Any Road" city="Any City" county="Countyshire" postcode="AB1 2DE">
  ... 
</addressBook>

So I guess that what I'm thinking is that this is quite similar in terms of accessing the data...

Something I need to think about a bit more though so I'll get back to you.

Dirty Little Secret

I have a sort of sick relationship, it's not something I'm proud of at all, it's something that I used to really quite worry about and that, when I told other people, would make me question my sanity as well as making me feel a little dirty, but in a nice way.

I even have to admit that I used to pay for it...

Then I could get it for free. I was still in a minority but that not paying for it made me feel even dirtier. I even turned other people onto it too, despite the problems it caused people they would still use. They were hooked too and it made me feel not quite so alone. Not so alone but still lonely!

That relationship is with Opera, not the music mind, but the browser!

How odd is it to admit that I once or twice paid for a browser because I was unsatisifyed with what everyone else was using?

And then along came Opera Unite and now I feel positively filthy!

Anyway, the link to my Opera Unite page is http://notebook.annoyingmouse.operaunite.com/webserver/ and it's only available when I'm online. Online and not using Firefox or Chrome. But never fear, I'll never use Internet Explorer! I'm just not that common!

Not sure what I'll keep on there at the minute though I'm putting my notes for M255 on there at the minute.

On a slightly different note just spent 2 hours of my life watching Up In The Air, that'll be 2 hours I'll never get back but also 2 hours of laughter and bitter-sweet disappointment. Ahh, I'll live but it's a shame he didn't get the girl! Worth a watch but not for everyone.

TiddlyWiki WikiWordMaker Boxer Macro

macro WikiWordMaker(){
  int selectionWidth, i;
  string str;
  Cut;
  selectionWidth = GetClipboardText(str, 0);
  PutString("[[");
  Paste;
  Right(selectionWidth);
  PutString("|");
  Paste;
  for(i = 0; i < selectionWidth; i++){
    SelectRight;
  }
  CaseWords;
  Deselect(0);
  Right(selectionWidth);
  PutString("]]");
}

So I've been playing with TiddlyWiki in preperation for doing the M255 and I was getting really rather tired of having to copy and paste and edit all the words and phrases I was using as tiddlyWords. The software is cool but I was getting too tired to continue due to the chore of having to enter square brackets all over the place. That is until I realised that I could use It's All Text! and get Boxer to do the heavy lifting.

Should anyone in the know think they can do a better job of the Macro then please be my guest, only please let me know how it could be improved! I reckon I should get it the check if a word or phrase is selected but I'm not sure how to do that as I use the default Windows Clipboard rather than one of Boxers internal ones.

Now if I could only sleep I'd be a happy bunny!

Edit: It stopped working so I've altered it a little.