Vacation Time

posted on 2009-12-17 17:22:58

At long last, this year is drawing to a close. I've ended my semester on a mostly positive note and am looking forward to the Christmas holidays. Why you ask? Well, for a few reasons.

There are people to catch up and hang out with. I've got books to read: A Deepness in Sky and maybe Diaspora. There may be some light video gaming between FFXII and Borderlands. But mostly, I have projects. I need to dive in to the code I'll be working with on my internship next semester...but not just to get a head start. The company I'll be working with is working on some pretty cool stuff and there are plenty of places where even a naive fellow like myself could be of help, provided I don't get in people's hair/workflow too much. I want to try to get a Paktahn release out by Christmas with Leslie. That means giving a good read through of the analysis of why SBCL's PKGBUILD fails on x86_64, fixing it and getting the result to juergen. Also for Paktahn, I want to start work on a branch using Unix-options for CLI argument handling and look over/improve a proxy branch I've been working on. Maybe a unit tests branch, as well. Besides that I have some programming books I'd like to read a bit of (and you have to do the exercises!) and various other small projects to toy with.

All that has to wait until at least tomorrow though. I'm taking today off to be with my girlfriend and relax a bit. She leaves Sunday at which point I'll go full into project-mode, I expect. :)

There's probably more to say here but I'm forgetting whatever it is...and my rice is ready. Cheers.

Unwind-Protect

posted on 2009-12-10 03:33:41

The semester is finally drawing to a close. I had my last class sessions today. Exams are on Monday and Wednesday followed by a much needed break. It's been a long 3-semester year with more twists and turns than I could've guessed. No matter what happens, the break will be here soon.

I have a variety of projects to work on over the break. I have one code base to get familiar with and another to get features and bug fixes written for. I also need to finally get around to writing the successor post to On Minimalism. Between the writings of Brian Hurt, Paul Snively and Roly Perera I'm getting a better idea what my thoughts and issues are and can hopefully come up with something good to say. I also might push out another "redlinux" release for the hell of it and have various other pet projects.

Now, for the recreational stuff. I'm going through another exploratory phase in my music listening and need to filter through some of the stuff I've pulled down from the vastness of the net. I just finished the first fiction reading I've done since...oh...Summer 2007? It felt good to read for pleasure again. I read Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and was thoroughly impressed. I'm looking forward to reading A Deepness in the Sky over the break.  Maybe Rainbow's End or Greg Egan's Diaspora if I'm feeling up to it. I can say that recharging my batteries will be my priority for whatever remains of December after finals. That and figuring out where I am in life and sensible goals for the next year. Of course, spending some time with Mom will figure prominently as well.

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