(no subject)

[godream]

I haven't posted for quite a while; this is because very little has happened -- besides me discovering that this whole 9-5 working as a code monkey thing is tiring, time-consuming, hard work. *sigh* Boy, am I going to hate the real world.

A quick question for you non-computer science types: let's say you saw a sign next to a pie that said something like:
if ((you != name1) && (you != name2))
   {if (touchedPie == true)
      name1.killMode = true;
   }

... where name1 and name2 are replaced with names of people you know. Is that readable? At all? I'm totally serious here; I know what it means and I thought it was real obvious, but my dad also encouraged me to play with basic code since age seven or something so I'm a slightly biased observer. I would think the presence of the words "pie" and "kill" would make it easy to guess, at least... but I'd also think the whole thing was followable with perhaps the exception of the !=. ETA: Okay, I'm informed there may also be handwriting questions... but still.

(This leads into the question of: if you are name3 and see name4 eating pie, should you say something? I did (though as politely as possible) which may or may not make me an asshole.)

Also -- beat_the_beaver and I took an exciting trip to the Cambridge River Festival several weekends ago. (Okay, so maybe something has happened besides 9-5ing.) I loved it... a chaos of bright colors and music and people selling overpriced things that are pretty to browse through.

One of the three music tents was sponsored by the Middle East club; it was at this one that we saw (I kid you not) Harry and the Potters perform. We were tragically unimpressed; it looked like two guys and canned midi-quality sound, although a look at their website makes it appear that if we'd hung around past the first song we might have seen actual instruments emerge, which would have been much better. In any event, we were both amused by their intro, at least: "Hi, I'm Harry Potter." "And I'm Harry Potter." "And we're Harry and the Potters." "Our first song is about The Man, and how The Man can't keep rock down. In this case, The Man is Voldemort..." (begin Voldemort Can't Stop The Rock).

Later, we were sitting and watching a few kayaks go down the river (while listening to a Spanish punk rock bank which I liked a lot) when this car comes puttering under the bridge. Under the bridge, not across the bridge -- evidently the couple driving this sucker had somehow modified it to be a boat. It was really fantastic -- you couldn't see any modifications from where we were, they might as well have been driving on land except maybe for the fact that they were steering backwards (Gina pointed out that they'd probably rigged the wheel to the rudder). It was an older car, with that sort of classic look to it, though neither of us were car buffs enough to be able to identify it (we thought you'd like it, liz_factorial) but it was extremely cool.

Comments

[blue-everglades.livejournal.com]

it took me a moment to parse your code, and i could see where any non-course 6 person might not get it, but if they were 6, that's just jackassery on their part.

i wish i'd been there to go to the river festival with you guys. hope loft-building and summery stuff is going well, and i hope your job isn't so painful!

[godream.livejournal.com]

The job is not bad at all, I just really enjoy whining. ;) Glad the e-mail thing helped -- it's nifty. We miss ya!

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

It's perfectly readable to me, but I took a year and a half of C++ in high school. I miss it, looking at that.

[godream.livejournal.com]

It always seems to me like people who've programmed at least a little are more common than those who haven't... which probably doesn't tell you so much about the world today as it does about the people I hang out with. :P Thanks for the input. :)

[kantayra.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have no trouble reading it, but I took a year of C++ in college. Before that, I'd just been an intensive math geek, and I probably could have figured it out just from that, although it probably would have taken me longer. I don't think it's the != operator that's difficult so much as the fact that there are imbedded if statements. Those take a while to work through, if you're not used to them.

[godream.livejournal.com]

Imbedded ifs, huh? That makes sense, I guess -- I'd never even considered it as a possible hangup, but now that you mention it I can see where it could be odd if you're not used to it. Thanks :)

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

I totally got it, and hey, you know me...I could ask my mom...i think i'll do that......she didnt get it. I think it might work better if you said:

if ((me != name1) && (you != name2))
{if (touchedPie == true)
name1.killMode = true;
}

I donno...it would work better for me cause i had to read it a time or two before i laughed, but i donno...good luck with that pie thing :)

[godream.livejournal.com]

*g* The funny thing is I didn't write it... Eric M did. Evidently he took a year of C++ in high school. :P

Speaking of classes and course-six-type-stuff, do you know whatall you're taking next year?

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

interesting....

yeah, what I take is based on my 18.03 test grade. I'm trying to do that now...If i pass I'm taking .002 (and I'll have to think about what to take instead of 18.03), if not...it's up in the air what my 4th class will be. but other than that i'm taking 6.041 and some hass.

I donno, i'm kinda scared that I wont pass and I'll have to improvise the spring semester...well, i gots to go...

[godream.livejournal.com]

*g* Take 170 with me! Really!

... yeah, or not. :P

Good luck -- how's the studying up going?

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

yeah, sure...I'll take 170, and then jump off the greene building...

as for the studying, that's not too happy...I need to work on it a bit more, but the internet here is so damn slow! and I tryed to dl the lectures, but it didnt fully work, so I still have to drive down the hill to watch them. do you know what i'm doing wrong? I donno, it's silly...

thanks!

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, and i chris didnt get it, but he's stupid ;) (and over my shoulder)

[godream.livejournal.com]

*g* Aww, poor Chris. (Whoever he is. Do I know of him by a nickname, like your fratboyhatboy here and so forth?)

And hey, if I get enough people to jump off the green building with me when I collapse from stress, think of all the scandal! We could make the front pages! (oh man am I going to regret next semester)

I've never played with watching lectures online -- remember, I'm still into that retro in-person thing -- so I'm afraid I can't help you much there; sorry. Were you getting errors while downloading or watching? Or was it just not working?

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

nope, you don't know chris, except that he's the one from home that i talk to on the net most often...and he's not bad, most of the time...but again, just one of the friends (not one of the guys, it's a different group)

I dont get an error message at all with the lectures. I downloaded them, or so I thought, but it ended up that all I got was a link and when I went to watch them it just streamed the info...I dont want to have to drive to my dad's office to watch them cause it's .5 hour away and if he's in a bad mood i dont wanna talk to him. I was just wondering if you knew if i could actually dl them...oh well.

I wish you luck with next term! and this summer! :)

[godream.livejournal.com]

Having gone and looked: yeah, it does look like the OCW folks are into the OMG nobody can steal our content or else strictly-streaming model. There's not a whole lot you can do about it that I know of -- I mean, theoretically anything that you can play you can capture in some way, with a program like this (http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio_software/audio_tools/streambox_vcr.cfm) for instance, but I've never tried and it's a little bit illegal. *shrugs*

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

well...thanks. it's very sad that they do that! I mean what about those of us on super slow dial-up, unfortunately there are connections slower than 56k! oh well...thanks again :)

[cassandraia.livejournal.com]

I get it...my mother usually says it to my dad and I.

[beat-the-beaver.livejournal.com]

SO, as the resident non-6 person, I should say that even I figured, based on certain key words such as "pie" and "kill." And I've never taken a programming class in my life. I think maybe some people just want free pie :)