loge.hixie.ch

Hixie's Natural Log

2005-11-29 04:47 UTC Rome, magic, steps, tanks and circles

For some strange reason, we got the end of last week off. As best I can determine, there was a surplus of turkeys in the turkey farms, and so the entire country had to be called into an emergency session of turkey eating. I've never seen this kind of thing happen before, it was weird. (Actually, come to think of it, when I was interning for Netscape there was a week in November where it seemed I was the only one working — I had assumed that there had just been some mysterious illness, but maybe it was related to this turkey emergency... It could be an annual thing. I'll have to keep an eye out next year, see if it happens again.)

Still, when in Rome...

One thing that sucks about not living in one place all the time (I've lived more than one year in four places so far — Geneva in Switzerland, the South West of the UK, Oslo in Norway, and the bay area) is that my friends are all spread all over the place. While I keep in touch with all of them, mostly thanks to the magic of IRC (and bitlbee, which makes even proprietary IM networks look like IRC), I don't get to see any more than about a quarter of my friends at any one time. And IRC isn't exactly the same as seeing them.

Looks like I'll be in Europe for several weeks at a stretch next year, though, what with the CSS working group F2F, X-Tech, and WWW2006 being back-to-back. March May might be a travel-heavy month. Hopefully I'll be able to see a bunch of friends and family at that time.

On Sunday, Pav, kerz and I set up kerz's yard. It's pretty cool. Kerz and I aren't quite sure what the next step will be, though we're probably going to get some more straight, and maybe some elevation.

On Friday I went to see Pride & Prejudice. I'm afraid to say I've never read the book, and frankly had been avoiding any exposure to it (including the BBC TV series), but I figured it was time to broaden my horizons (and the Harry Potter film was sold out). The Red Dwarf scene with the tank and the lake makes slightly more sense to me now.

It was a good story, much better than I expected, and once I was used to the language it was fun to listen to the way they phrased things. I wish I spoke more like that. It's so eloquent. It also seems that the dating scene has changed quite a bit since that story's time period. (Not that I understood how it really worked in the movie any more than I understand how it's supposed to work today, but that's another story altogether.)

Back at work I'm currently having difficulties working out how to do menus in HTML5. I don't like what's in the spec now. Lachlan made some good suggestions on the list, though. I hate being stumped, because it makes me run around in circles and makes me feel very unproductive (although of course running around in circles thinking through the consequences of possible designs is just as important as speccing out a design in the first place).