Aquarionics

This week in brief

So, since I’m still in a state of employment limbo, I’ve been Expanding My Skills Base in preparation for diving into either unemployment or the new project as soon as it’s confirmed one way or the other.

This means that I’ve spent a week mucking around with mod-python, vmware, X-Servers for Windows (a combination of the last two have given me access to Konquerer from Windows, which is useful), perl and IRC bots.

IRC bots? Well, yes… I was introduced to IdleRPG last week, an IRC-Based RPG system where the idea is – basically – to idle on channel. This is neat, and everything, but I’ve never been particulally good at participating in things without seeing how they could be better, so it was kinda inevitable that I’d end up finding the source and hacking around on it. I tested it on a channel I’m on, and it took off remarkably quickly. A few modifications – to give a bonus instead of penalty for talking, as benefits a live channel rather than a dedicated Idling one – plus a host of decision-by-committee enhancements to the formulas have kept me working.

Plus, the RSI is back, which is… well, yes.

Another five minutes of editing Mockingbird (That’s “Five minutes of story to edit” of the next eight minutes of the file, taking about – oooh, an hour?) and I’ll be ready for the next stage, which is finding samples of bird-song to put into the background.

So, life is ebbing and flowing. It usually is.