The last week has been filled with geeky activity. I love it. Nerdhood is something I've learned to appreciate over the years — once upon a time, actually within my lifetime, it was a badge of shame. The digital revolution has changed that, and now nerds are heroes. If anything, they're running companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and yes, even Microsoft (though I personally think Microsoft's days are increasingly numbered).
My new career is a part of this surging geekiness. I've become familiar with the intricacies of Ajax and jQuery over the last week, and I've brushed up on my JavaScript and SQL skills. Yeah, JavaScript. I'm not a huge fan, but I know how it works and have written with it before (nothing important). The language hasn't changed a lot since I used it last. But, people's understanding of it has evolved and deepened, and perhaps more importantly, browser support of it has become standardized — allowing useful design patterns to be constructed. At heart, I'm a server-side kind of guy... but I might have to start playing with it a little.
Besides, Ajax is some wicked-ass shit, and I want to dabble in that wickedness. And since it requires JavaScript, I guess I'll have to dance with the devil a little.
I discovered a site where you can customize and download one of those
"processing, please wait" things, more commonly known as a throbber. I suspect that will come in handy if
I really start playing with Ajax. This page looks like it's doing something
right now, but really it's not.
Kubuntu 10.04 LTS came out last week, and
I've burned a live CD to play with. I'm very pleased with KDE 4.4. It's the
first release from the 4.x series that's felt stable to me. So, as soon as I
get a spare evening, I'll install it. One of the cool things about Linux is you
can put /home on a separate partition, so when it's time to reload
the OS, all your personal settings, documents, and so forth are exactly where
you left them. Hopefully it will be pretty painless moving from KDE 3.x to 4.x,
but I'm guessing there will be some settings specific to 3.x which could
potentially monkey things up. Hence why this is a "spare evening" project
instead of a "spare hour" project.
Over the weekend I ran the 5th Annual WV Scrabble Tournament, an event I enjoy every year. Yes, I'm that Scrabble guy (but not jedijawa). I normally blog all my Scrabble activities separately, but since running the tournament fits with the theme of this entry, I felt like it needed to be at least mentioned here. Besides, it's something else which took up a good portion of my time over the last week or so. I've been asked to do a write-up about the event for a Scrabble newsletter as well, so that's something I'll be looking at this week. My triumphant return to journalism!
After the tournament was over I got to relax in the Clay Center Planetarium, the first time I've been in a planetarium since Martha and I made an impromptu trip to Chicago about 16 years ago. Odd coincidence: Chicago, the band, will be at the Clay Center on May 19.
Normals be warned... there's a geek on the loose.