Hacking activities
Well, the weekend didn't turn out as productive as I had hoped. Much of the time that I should have spent hacking on XFree86 4 was instead spent forking Debian's ALSA packages. The current package maintainer seems to have some staggeringly strange ideas about package relationships. Once these are finished, I'll make them available on my Debian webpage, put up a Packages.gz, and let users vote with their feet.
Not-so-hacking activities
Got through about eight chapters each of Tcl and the Tk Toolkit and The Final Days. Tcl's syntax is every bit as quirky as people warned me. Ousterhout is right, there really are just a few simple rules; I just have to learn to selectively switch off my mental Bourne (and, to a lesser extent, C) syntax filters. It is interesting to read about the Nixon presidency and contrast it with what is regarded as political malfeasance today. In Nixon's day, it was believed that if word of the Huston Plan got out, it would be terribly damaging to him politically. Today, Louis Freeh testifies before Congress, bald-facedly asserting the necessity of surveillance powers that were but a spook's masturbatory fantasy in 1974 -- and yet hysterical partisans try to take down the President for getting his pole waxed by a coat-tail riding fluffer. Things in this country are screwed. Maybe I'll have to stow away in Wichert's luggage next time we're at a Linux conference together.
How much do I owe the RIAA for this?
Popped a couple of CD's in the stereo, cranked it and the guitar amplifier up, and got in some practice today. Half a dozen Beatles tunes (Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Lady Madonna, Hey Jude, and Revolution) and Limelight by Rush. Two things really suck about the latter -- 1) trying to count through the guitar solo is unholy difficult, but also the only the way to play it right; 2) the clean channel during the chorus was a single-coil overdub, so I have exactly the space between two eighth notes to move the pickup switch *and* step on the distortion pedal to switch it to bypass, if I want to reproduce the original parts. Playing that clean part through the humbucker sounds awful to me. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to palm-mute the part instead. Did I mention how hard it is to count the solo?
Quaint thoughts
Frankly, I think people have the right to be disinterested in whatever discussion threads they choose, and don't deserve to have inflammatory rhetoric used against them. Connotating "quaint" as "brutally dismissive" -- very clever, reinforces that male stereotype of brutality. These are diary entries. People should take what they want and leave what they don't. They should also be left free to say why they're taking or leaving it. :) This is not a symposium. Diary entries should not be regarded as attempts at persuasive speech, though they may contain strongly opinionated remarks. IMO, the right way to write, and read, these entries is with a generous dollop of indifference to the interests of others. That said, may I should take my own advice and just start ignoring the person by whom I feel provoked. :)
Hmm, wish I had some more hacking talk, but today just wasn't a very hacking day...I caught enough of tonight's X-Files episode (written and directed by Gillian Anderson) to note that it seemed primarily to be showcase for the Moby album, and some really shallow introspective monologues. So I got myself an antidote to both; popped in Liquid Tension Experiment 2 and indulged myself in 75 minutes of anti-minimalistic instrumentals. :) (Actually, the final half-hour is a relatively laidback.)