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
These are the perils of weilding a weapon you do not know how to use:
Imagine walking down a dark alley, unlit save for the light of a distant building near its mouth, and, for a moment, the glint of a pen-knife in your hand, the blade drawn and ready to use on any would be attackers.
Picture, now, a figure emerging from the shadows, face dark, impassive, dangerous. See him ask you, quite politely, for money. Hear your voice, trembling, as you hold up the knife---too late you realize it is puny, small, and not entirely useful---and warn him to stay away. Smell the ambient air, thick with traces of smoke and something rotten (you would not deign to think what that something could possibly be). Feel the pain as, after lurching forward and stabbing at him clumsily, he grabs your wrist and twists the knife out of your grasp. Taste the blood in your mouth as he uses the knife to stab you in your chest, takes your money, strips you naked, and leaves you to die, burbling and drowning in your own blood.
And you think, in your last moments, about shameful, painful arrogance, and weapons, and the forms that they take, and the souls that they break.
The worst thing about weapons is not that they kill, or injure, or inflict tortures both real and imagined; it is the illusions they provide, which only break when you cut yourself, and oftentimes not even then.
The pen is the mightiest of weapons, and the one most abused.
Welcome once again to this pathetic freakin' corner of my everyday world.
On the headlines tonight:
Small, petty woman for sale. She claims that she can burn your balls and scratch your eyes out at the slightest provacation, but what you actually get is closer to a high, droning whine, the insistent pitch of a griping hound.
This, on a happy day.
Several small things.
Small thing number one: You're cruelest to the people you love.
Number two: Temper. It flares. It burns. It scars.
Three: I don't want you to understand.
Nothing happened, dear. There is no why. I love you. Oh happy day.
Thank you for putting up with such a small, petty little personality.
This is not an entry. You are hallucinating after more than a month of seeing the same words ove and over again, like a mantra. The sheer monotony is creating the illusion of something new.
These are not my words, they are the products of your imagination.
Chase the Rain
You wouldn’t think something like rain would have a distinct boundary, but once, when we were driving along the Service road one cloudy (but dry) day, I looked ahead and saw that part of the road was wet, and that—yes, it was raining. In a few seconds we had crossed the boundary and raindrops tinkled on the car’s roof and windshield. Comical representations of rain—you know, those little dark stormclouds hovering over the head of some dour, unlucky ‘toon—spring to mind.
When clouds move, rain follows. There was a character in Douglas Adams' So Long and Thanks for All the Fish that was followed by the rain all his life; wherever he went, any time of the day, it was raining. It turned out he was a Rain God.
In cartoons and in stories, rain chases us, because the thought is supposed to be funny, especially given the fact that we’re not supposed to like rain. A sensible person, in the English idiom, is someone who “gets in out of the rain”, thus a character’s comic annoyance when the rain follows.
Consequently, the opposite is never considered, being much too absurd. The idea of a role reversal always is fun, though; what if it was you who chased the rain instead, always following storms and clouds and the tinkling raindrops?
People chase the rain, in a way, when they burst out of their homes to dance in the rain. I’ve done that all of once in my life, and that was very, very long ago. And we catch the rain our mouths and hands, which are spread wide open in anticipation.
It rains practically every day here during rainy season, and I chased the rain only once in my life. This will be something I will regret, surely, but tomrrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will pass and the number will remain the same.
What reason is there for me to chase the rain, anyway? During the rainy season, people get runny noses and pneumonia and walk home in floods, wet and cold and utterly miserable. Why would any sane person subject herself to that?
[Perhaps to remain sane.]
Anyway, rain or not, here’s to greeting everything with our hands and mouths spread open in anticipation instead of slinking underneath overhangs and trees. Cheers!
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.
