Tech Break
Have a break, have a KitKat! Belated happy birthday! She's turned three last August 26. Isn't she cute? Yeah, even I'm not immune to gushing over children, sorry.
It's kinda funny posting a picture of her all smiley and whatnot, because she usually doesn't smile for photos at all, and instead stares at you with her mouth hanging slightly open. Honestly, this kid could stare you down bigtime. And her voice isn't high and tinny either. She has this huge, booming voice, and when she calls her brothers she knows she's boss. She's awesome that way.
Anyway, this wasn't what I was supposed to write about at all. What prompted this post was Mozilla's Ubiquity, which I found super-cool, and I just had to gush (yes, lots of gushing from me today. Hormones, perhaps). I titled the post 'Tech Break' because for once I was planning to (key word: planning) to take a break from writing self-involved posts and instead talk about cool nerdy things (again, not an oxymoron, dammit), like all the million and one tech-oriented blogs in this world do (sorry, the word blogosphere is a huge personal no-no). But then the first line wrote itself, and all was lost.
Yeah, anyway, Ubiquity. Pretty much anything Mozilla does every major tech blog writes about, and explanations are tedious anyway, so I won't bother (watch the video if you haven't yet, or honestly, just try it out, it's beyond awesome). It's an alpha, of course, but it's surprisingly usable.
I've been pretty much a fan of Firefox's customizability from the get-go, and until now it's the reason why I love the browser. Extensions that have extensions are particularly interesting to me intellectually, even if I don't use most of them (e.g. Greasemonkey and Stylish), which is why I like the way Ubiquity makes it easy to make custom commands. It's nice seeing Mozilla continuing being supremely extensible and developer-friendly, given that the approach has been a huge part of their success.
The first time an extension for Firefox really blew me away was when IETab came out. Admittedly, Firefox was young and everything was bright and shiny then. Still, admit it, you know what I'm talking about; it was like a huge 'wow' moment that that froze time when I discovered IETab. The killer was that it could open IE-only pages in a Firefox tab, automatically. I used it on my bank's site, among others (fortunately that bank has since decided to use non-IE-specific javascript). Nowadays everyone knows about it (aside from its usefulness, it became infamous for certain memory leaks), which has diminished the bling factor, but the fact remains that it was one of the reasons I stuck with Firefox. I doubt that I'm alone in that regard.
In the short time that has passed since I first 'discovered' IETab and now, technology has changed immensely, especially when it comes to the web. It's funny, though; in essence, most of it is just glorified text parsing (XML? Yeah. JSON? Yeah. Atom, RSS? What do you think? Microformats? Same thing), but the applications are staggering. Same thing with Ubiquity. It's all simple applications of existing technologies, but damn if it isn't useful.
Back
I'm cycling back. Maybe I should make a new blog, or get a microblog account or 12 (then again, with my propensity for verbosity, that probably wouldn't work. Or perhaps that would help prevent the the loss of focus and burnout?).
Yeah, this blog is so 2005. Heh.
As I have said so often, I'm not really the social type. I don't snap a thousand fifty-six pictures and upload them for the world to see, I don't network with people (Friendster? Deleted. Eskwela.com? Deleted. Dozens of invites to Multiply and the like? Ignored. I'm sorry, I really, truly am. Maybe tomorrow, the Procrastinator says.), which is why I lose touch so frequently. I don't really update or, erm, share, because I don't have the drive and energy. Or because I just forget.
In case the above sounds like a self-involved whine, well, I suppose it is. Let me assure you, however, that the state of things is my fault entirely, and that I'm (somewhat) fine with things as they are.
I miss writing, though. I haven't created anything of worth in literally years. That's the sole reason for this.
Right now I'm just trying to re-familiarize myself with writing, as I think that that part of my brain has atrophied. So forgive me if things don't make sense.
A Snippet, v1
It happened slowly, like an avalanche.
It's not an oxymoron, dammit. Do you think that a mound of snow appears instantly, snap, now there's snow packed at critical mass, ready to blow? Snow falls and accumulates on a steep slope until it reaches a critical mass, and only after a trigger, a shout, a squawk, a whir, and only then does it go boom.
So yeah, exactly like an avalanche. And that last one was onomatopoeia, so you're still wrong. Mwah.
How did we meet again? Was it Beth who introduced you to me, who set up the conversation to make you appear thoughtful and intelligent and (other)worldly? Or did I ask Beth for the setup? I can't remember, I'm forgetful that way.
I know, shut up.
So yeah, critical mass, and a trigger. Snoring is a fair trigger, right? Your snoring is loud enough to cause the heavens to fall from the skies. Like a fighter jet on turbo, and with limitless fuel.
Hyperbole and simile, love. You got it the other way around.
...What? I can't believe you're mad. Do you blame the mountain when it explodes? How the hell can you blame me for smothering you with a pillow? It's simple enough: no oxygen for you = no snoring for me to hear. Duh.
Dude, if I knew you'd be more talkative dead than alive, I never would have killed you. Fuck you.
I didn't mean that literally, dammit! How can somebody so smart not understand figures of speech?
Everything I've ever said, ever done, has been a metaphor for love.
[end snippet]
I'm not sure what that was. The approach is interesting for me, although admittedly somewhat cliché. It's a different version of an old short story I wrote. I'm basically trying different writing styles.
It's actually part of a larger and somewhat surreal story, but this particular scene is interesting to me, so I wanted to try and write different versions of it. The figures-of-speech theme is something that wasn't planned and basically appeared while I was writing it, but I found it cute so I kept it. I'm trite that way.
I'll try something else in a few days. If I can find the motivation, as usual.Labels: snippet
Have a break, have a KitKat! Belated happy birthday! She's turned three last August 26. Isn't she cute? Yeah, even I'm not immune to gushing over children, sorry.
