Sleep Interrupted

Last night we had burritos. There was a little left over, so Louise made me one up to take to work today. Just for the record, I’d like to say, damn did it taste good!

In our house, burritos are now exclusively referred to as “messy food”. This is entirely propaganda on our part, in an attempt to convince Ben that it’s okay if the burrito falls apart and bits drop out of it. He used to get so panicked when it happened and we never did figure out why; we just worked around the problem with a cunning new name.

When Java first came out, I did a little programming in it to see what the fuss was all about. This was probably about 1995 and there’s no denying that it’s come a long way since then. But I’ve never really been able to get excited about it; languages I want to get into are Python and Ruby, or at the other end of the scale C#, so that I can play with Mono.

I could never quantify exactly what was putting me off, but now Chris Blizzard has posted a great argument about how Java’s licensing has harmed it. Having read it, I would have to agree and admit that the fragmentation and non-ubiquity of the run time environment are probably the largest turn-offs for me.

Yesterday Louise recounted to me one of those strange, small child conversations she had with Ben. While she was writing Ben’s birthday list (for use by the rest of the family) he came up to her and asked, “What you writing down, Mummy?”

“I’m writing down a list of things that you would like for your birthday.”

“What’s on the list?”, he asked.

“Well, there’s a helecopter and a police car. What other things would you like?”

After a little thought he replied, “A little book. And a cat.”

“A cat like Tilly?”

Exasperated, because small children are much like teenagers in how quickly they loose their patience, he explained, “No! A tiny cat like Jasper!” Jasper is our next door neighbour’s cat, who really is tiny when compared to our lump of a cat, Tilly.

“Anything else?”

More thought, then, “Yes. A small chair.”

“A small chair? Like your chair over there?”

“No!”, he said, grasping his index finger in his fist so that only the tip stuck out, “As small as my finger!”

“You want a chair as small as your finger?!”

“Yes”, he replied in a matter-of-fact voice before breaking out in laughter.

When I was at Ed’s stag weekend earlier in the year, Tim was horrified to find out that I wasn’t into Kings Of Leon in a big way. I was reminded of this just now while listening to LCD Soundsystem; the track Give It Up reminded my of them, in a dance-punk find of way. So Tim, I think you should check out that album. It’s certainly patchy, but when it’s good, it’s proper good.

It’s only been a couple of weeks, but Jessica is at the point where she’s choosing to walk rather than crawl. She also climbed the stairs for the first time today, escorted of course. Amazing!

We were singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with Ben today when we looked down and noticed that Jessica was joining in with the actions by making a diamond shape with her hands; she’s visibly progressing in so many ways at the moment.

I finally finished watching season one of Babylon 5 last week, which puts my a little behind schedule. It’s a fairly solid start, with patches of brilliance and patches of not-so-greatness. It certainly lives up to its title of “Signs And Portents”.

Having started season two, though — wow! The first three episodes are just gold. So much classic B5 in such a small place. If you haven’t seen them in a while, dig them out because I’d forgotten how much better they were than what came before.

Update: Dave Estall reminds me that it should be fried gold.

Jessica wobbled her way between our two sofas this evening, in her first proper walk; a distance of about three feet. And not before time, I tell you! In other news, I’ve been laid low over the last few days with some sort of cold bug donated by one of the children. Oh happy me.

While I was at work I was wondering how to correctly capitalise a title that had words like “and” and “for” in. So I headed over to the Wikipedia capitalisation article and discovered that Capitialising Most or All Words in a Title is not a hard-and-fast rule, more a choice of style. In Europe, it is more often considered “correct” to capitalise titles as if they were a normal sentence; there are even some benefits in doing so. I’d not noticed this before, but it’s true — take a look at the BBC News site, for instance.

Daniel Glazman has an interesting post on the addition of transformation capabilities to CSS. I mention it, though, because of his thoughts in the final paragraph, which rung very true with my own experiences:

…you always have to bring a proposal three times on the table. The first time, it’s immediately rejected; the second time, it’s rejected but discussed; the third time, it’s accepted.

I’d not thought of it in these terms before, but it will certainly help me be more tenacious in future.

It’s been a whole year since I started blogging. Blimey! Anyone out there still reading this thing? Leave a comment if you are.