Back in the high life again

So I sat down today to do my first serious programming since getting laid off, and it's incredible both how much I'd forgotten and how quickly it comes back to me.

My current project is something I've been wanting to do for literally years -- a PHP version of the Nonsense randomizing package. I'm a huge fan of randomly generated content. I can spend far, far too much time playing with dragonscholar's random generation scripts. I've always considered Nonsense to be the pinnacle of randomly-generated web content because of its flexibility, its versatility and its recursion capacity. Which is great, until you try to code it from scratch (no source code for me, doin' it the ol'fashioned way).

And I'm hysterically farther than I thought I'd be after day one. Hell, my biggest hurdle so far was turning error logging back on after having it turned off since upgrading. But now all's going swimmingly.

No, it doesn't work yet, but it fails to work in very interesting ways. I think I'm going to have to gut the templating engine I came up with today and make a new one, which sounds worse than it is. But right now everything is coded except Nonsense's capacity to execute raw code that exists in the templates. I'm not sure I want to do that, mostly for security reasons, mostly 'cause I don't know I'll ever need it. And just partially because I don't want to have to do it.

And Muffin's been a very helpful little pig the whole time. Right now he's preening on my wrist.

My high school stereotype is....

Well, your choices (in alphabetical order) are Drama nerd, Geek, Ghetto gangsta, Goth, Loner, Prep/Jock/Cheerleader, Punk/Rebel, and Stoner. Guess which one I am? ( Duh. )

G'night, Carnac

Johnny Carson dead at 79.

I think people see him in today's terms and don't realize how much of a rule-breaker he was back in the day -- a few tiffs with network S&P people and the FCC -- seeing him as old-guard conservative humor is just...selling the man short. Smart. Classy. Funny.

Still the best.

Two questions, related

1. Anyone ever have any problem with Maxell DVD+R media before?

2. Anybody want a spindle and half of Maxell DVD+R media (~20)? Maybe they'll work for you, but I've gone back to the Memorex after coastering all weekend and losing ~4 GB of data. Insert string of colorful, evocative profanities here. Note that these media were working just fine before this weekend -- I have one catalogued, even, but now, to my drive, it's just unreadable. And yet the Memorex still work.

And two links, related, but not to the former two.

First, the 2005 Lego Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith tie-ins. Nothing horribly surprising. Oooh, a Vader with a light-up lightsaber. Meh. Nice effort on the Darth Vader Transformation and for letting Mace Windu finally get a minifig.

Also, someone's got a very impressive of home-grown comic-based minifigs. Finally J'onn J'onnz in Lego-form. And there's something just odd about Braniac 5, but I'm not complaining. Unless you get me started on the topic of watermarking, in which case, mumble mumble.