Journal entries - August 2008
To study further or not
It’s that time again. University application time. September approaches, and thousands of students all over the world are either applying for their first year at university/college, or are preparing to compile application files to send to universities for next year (in Anglo-Saxon countries mostly).
I’m about to enter my fifth year at university, and though theoretically this application business should be well behind me, I find myself struggling with it once more. This time, however, it has an added twist: should I study for an extra degree or not?
Leopard glyphs: update
The Leopard glyphs for Mail and Preview have been updated to fix some issues, and a second set of glyphs has joined them.
The glyphs now come in two formats: there is the “normal” state, which puts general usability first, and there is the “Leopard+” state, which puts consistency first.
The writing never stops
Weird thing, writing a novel. Novels, really. The more you’ve written, the further away the end seems. At least, I’m currently at that point in Arpia volume 2 (I’m starting to wonder whether the two volumes shouldn’t be offered to publishers as one, with the option to divide it in two within the book).
Volume 1, currently entitled “Arpia, Flight of Dawn” (FoD, vol. 1), is 90.000 words long (some 190 A4 pages). And while I believe “Arpia, Fight of Eve” (FoE, vol. 2) will be as long, I’m now at 110 pages completed, or 53.000 words.
A list of films
Another random thing here!
I like lists, sometimes. It makes me feel organised. I have made lists of my favourite bands/artists, songs and albums in the past, but I never used my .numbers list of films to set in writing my favourite films.
According to this spreadsheet (I know, I’m a little mad to have made this monster), we have 548 films, a massive amount of them recorded when they showed on TV in the past 15 years, for a total of 252 videos and 273 DVDs, not counting the two DVDs I burnt recently but have not yet added to the list nor the films still on our HD recorder…
iTunesque update: glyphs for Mail & Preview
Finally. It took me some time, because my law internship kind of broke the pace of things (wink wink nudge nudge), but I have finally completed reworking the glyph designs made by Dustin Schau for Mail.app and Preview.app in order to replace the “Aqua” ones that have existed for the past X years, and have compiled the whole thing into one package with automated installer & uninstaller and with manual installation instructions.
So, what exactly do these glyphs look like?
Killing a novel character
I had to post this: I have just killed an important character in the Arpia novels, and his/her death is told as he/she experiences it.
And I have to admit it’s a strange experience. I’ve often experienced emotions with my characters, and have many times written of things I have never felt or gone through myself, but writing one’s experience of death is beyond all that. I even had tears in my eyes at one point.
Apple’s App Store a month after launch
For the uninitiated, Apple launched the iPhone 3G a month ago, and with it came a software update for all existing iPhones & iPod Touches (well, I’ve no idea how to write the plural for “iPod Touch”).
This software update was “the big one”, because Apple launched an application store (the “App Store”) accessible to all iDevices with that new OS update. As any self-respecting Apple fanatic, I promptly upgraded my iPod Touch. And boy, am I amazed at this thing.