Aquarionics

(sung to The Beatles “Let it Be”)

(I’ve never found out who wrote this one, or this varient. I’ve modified it slightly from the text I found)

When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
“Code in C.”

As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers
“Code in C.”

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, Code in C.
LISP is dead and buried,
Code in C.

I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
for science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Code in C.

If you’ve just spent 30 hours
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Code in C.

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, yeah, Code in C.
Only wimps use Python.
Code in C.

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, oh, Code in C.
Pascal won’t quite cut it.
Code in C.

{ Guitar Solo }

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, yeah, Code in C.
Don’t even mention COBOL.
Code in C.

And when the screen is fuzzy,
And the edior is bugging me.
I’m sick of ones and zeroes.
Code in C.

A thousand people people swear that T.P.
Seven is the one for me.
I hate the word PROCEDURE,
Code in C.

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, yeah, Code in C.
PL1 is 80′s,
Code in C.

Code in C, Code in C,
Code in C, yeah, Code in C.
The government loves ADA,
Code in C.

Every so often I recommend people, when they don’t have anything to do, or want something to read, to go browse the archives of Intertext for a while. I’ve been reading it for several years now, and it’s been consistantly good.

I kept meaning so write things and submit them, but never got around to it.

Too late now, Intertext is dead. It will be missed.

In parting, though, it leaves us with the festive story Santa Claus Must Die!! which you should read.

It’s half past ten. The Christmas dinner was a qualified success (A couple of things were a little overdone) and my new breadmaker is quietly cooling in the background. The Christmas pudding was set alight, and was gorgeous.

I have both port and stilton, new games to play, book to read (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell). In a couple of days we will be invaded by parents & possibly even siblings (who I haven’t seen since May), and a couple of days after that I’ll wander up to spend New Years with friends.

I don’t post enough when stuff is good and I’m not stressing, so consider this a “Life is good” post.

And, as a Christmas gift from my MP3 collection to you lot, a piece of festive family fun.

• Mailbox – Let’s get the baby high

  Happy holidays.

So last night I dreamt I was setting up a wiki.

Except I was doing it with about two hundred people in a warehouse, and I put Artela and Lalajia in charge of the magazine, which wasn’t going to be called Cogsworth after the clock in beauty and the beast. I set other people (afpers, afers, suds people and school-friends I haven’t seen for ever) doing other things.

The first rehearsal involved everyone sitting at exam desks, and Lalajia got number 001, and called it out, so I wrote it down, but then I had to go.

I got to where I needed to be, but when I was going back, I ran into the (government?) operatives we were hiding from. I refused to show them my ID card, so they shot at me with blue plasma cannons.

Fortunately I was super-fast and bulletproof.

The world has ended. I’ve stopped updating.

Okay, not exactly, but I’ve Lillypadded slightly. I’ll explain in a second, first, the life update:

I’m now on Christmas holidays. I’m on emergency call for work most of the holidays, but the number of things that would necessitate calling me up from Letchworth (…when everyone else lives in Bedford…) is tiny. I can think of two, offhand.

Of course, I haven’t done any Christmas shopping at all. I’m planing on doing it all tomorrow.

Insane?

Possibly. It’ll be fun, and my feelings for humanity need a blow at this seasonal time…

Tomorrow I have to:

• Go into town to collect pre-ordered turkey from Friendly Local Butcher
• Collect FoodStuff from Places
• Dump it at home
• Go somewhere with shops (probably Cambridge)
• Shop.
• Shop some more.
• Get lunch
• Finish the shopping
• Come home
• Wrap up presents
• Tidy up a bit

• Die from tiredness.

  In that order.

  So, Lilly padding. The Lilly Pad Syndrome, as it was called when I used it to explain what the Prince was doing with his life during the time when it happened (Ye gods, that’s a convoluted sentence. I don’t use aliases much in this journal, really, but the Prince got one early on.) It basically is the tendency of people (me included) to keep an eye on where they want to jump to, at the extreme negligence of the lillypad they’re currently standing on. This means, to overextend the metaphor slightly, they get wet when it sinks.

  In this case, I have a New Thing, which will take a little while to set up (and I’m not sure will be worth the effort). It’s part of my campaign to get back to writing content. Watch this space. Unfortunately it means that instead of thinking of what I’m going to do for this, now, I’m busy working on Pareidol and how it’ll work instead.