I'm not going to spoil it here. Instead, I'm going to take advantage of the uncharacteristically upbeat mood I've been left in, and talk about some other things that are awesome.
1). COBOL is Awesome!
I have four weeks left of my probation period at the COBOL factory, and the current expectation is that I'll pass with flying colours. In the past five months I've picked up COBOL and JCL with reasonable facility, and I'm finding coding to be remarkably fun. I haven't enjoyed a job this much in a long time.
2). Editing is Awesome!
In the past week I've put together over 5,000 words of the second draft of the novel. That's nowhere near the sort of pace at which I crank out words during November, of course, but it's pretty good for keeping regular life ticking over at the same time. There will doubtless be further blogging about the process at some point.
3). Making Stuff is Awesome!
I've already blogged about the cushions I made recently. No doubt there'll be more in future, since I have crochet on the go and plans for several cool jackets (I'm weirdly obsessed with the idea of making jackets. Not sure why, but jackets are awesome). The fireplace in my living room is decorated with crocheted amigurumi and a tiny robot panda made of felt, and I recently rediscovered the pencil tidy I made from clothes pegs in my youth and redeployed it so I won't have to spend quite so much time looking for a pen to do the crossword at the weekend.
4). This Thing is Awesome!
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| Look at it. It's beautiful. |
I came across this in a shop window in Kyoto a few years ago, and it's one of the most awesomely steampunk things I've ever seen in real life. It's an automated machine for making tiny cakes of some description. Metal rings come down a chute at the back and are positioned on the inner ring of the hot plate. Batter is squirted in, then they make a full rotation to cook one side before being flipped over onto the outer ring to cook the other side. After that second rotation they're taken off the hot plate and are ready to go. The photo doesn't entirely do it justice, because it was absolutely mesmerising to watch.
5). Lego is Awesome! (Obviously)
Do I really need to say anything here? I think I'll let this be my final word on the subject:
Programmers: we may whine about staying late in the office because we find critical bugs in urgent code, but the truth is, that kind of things gives us a buzz.
ReplyDeleteI think editing works the same way: it's technical, creative problem-solving, and it's really fulfilling when you get it right.
They don't let me look at the critical bugs just yet, but I was pretty damn pleased with myself yesterday for writing some code to correctly capitalise a variety of surnames in a training exercise. And for working out how to feed the program the user ID of the person running it without hard coding it as a literal. Bonus points for me.
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