If you’re wondering where I’ve been lately, no, I didn’t go to Europe again. That’s off the radar for at least another five years. I’ve just been incredibly busy the past week. There was only one day this week that I got to bed before 1AM, and having kicked my Mountain Dew habit four weeks ago, it goes without saying that I’ve been tired too.
The third academic quarter is coming to a close, and of course teachers are rushing to get grades in. In this week alone I ended up plowing through three different model AP exams in Statistics, Physics, and Macroeconomics. I had two different long-term writing assignments due for AP Language/Composition, which as a result of my own procrastination got some finishing touches over the course of the week as well. We’re also working on fractal generation in Java, which has got to be the dreariest and most useless thing I’ve ever programmed. After useful stuff like data management and something resembling a cheap version of MS Paint, I really can’t see where the use for one of these would come in.
I’ve been doing some of the filming and editing for our senior comedy night. Digital video is pretty useful: it’s easy to import and edit, and it doesn’t look all that bad either, especially when compared to what I got off my old VHS camcorder. The digital camcorder I’m using is a decent size: it fits nicely in one hand, and provides easy access to all of the controls on it, and keeps all of the external hookups in one convenient place. Compare that with most of the tiny cameras most people have nowadays: the tapes load from the bottom, the headphone jack is on the back, and most bizarrely of all, the Firewire port is smack under the lens. That’s not even to mention that the camera is so thin that it doesn’t easily fit the curvature of my hand. Of course, MiniDV tapes are MiniDV tapes; I can let other people film with their cameras and then just take their tapes to do the editing. (To Antony: no, I will not be editing on a Mac.)
I’m currently working for a local bar (a different one this time). This bar has a program in which, if a patron drinks 78 different brands of beer, he or she is entitled to a free mug. Currently they keep track of who’s drank what with a shoebox full of cards. I’m currently designing some software in C# that will automate the process, not to mention make it several hundred times easier for the bartenders to pull up a user’s record. Ideally we’re going to run in on MSI Wind netbooks behind the bar, interfaced to Canon portable 4x6 printers, as space is a concern. The system will batch out to a machine running SQL Server in the back room so that it will theoretically scale to n terminals, though we’re most likely going to start with two and work from there. Among other cool options we’re considering are collecting e-mail addresses, so that the patron’s statistics can be batched out and e-mailed every night at midnight.
I’ll most likely be meeting with another local business early in April on a Web design offer I got through a friend. From the looks of things, I’ll also most likely be investigating a flaky e-mail system. That business isn’t located within range of any public transport, so I’ll still have to work out getting there when my friend can’t take me, but of course nothing is final yet anyway, but hopefully I’m finally getting a chance to make more productive money than through occasional computer repair.