Journal Entries
GRAARGH.c AND THE ALIEN SPACESHIP
Posted Apr 17, 2004
I've had to give up on making a secret of learning to program: it's just too complicated for me not to ask Gothly for help. Last week, I started working through the exercises in Kernighan and Richie's book on C programming. I was doing really well for the first two days, and then I came across this question:
"Exercise 1-6. Verify that the expression getchar() !=EOF is 0 or 1."
I mean, what on Earth is that?? To me, that's the equivalent of saying, "Grock that the haddock flanfling gibberish is down or up."
Even after Gothly had explained what it means, I was none the wiser for several hours. I kept being given advice like, "you're almost there; now, how can you change the expression after the while statement to give the *value* of c?" And the peals of belly-laughter weren't exactly encouraging.
I was expecting to learn a new language, but this is more like walking into a universe where all the rules are different. My brain feels as though someone has actually tied it in a knot. But! Gothly has embarked upon a sci-fi novel.
Now, Gothly's understanding of creative writing is sort of like my understanding of programming, so we've both been writing and scowling and tearing our hair out all day. It's good to suffer in company.
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Latest reply: Apr 17, 2004
SMACK IN THE CHOPS
Posted Apr 9, 2004
I punched a guy in the face today.
I haven't done that since school, when some lad was pummeling the crap out of my brother. And it really did feel as though I was back at school.
I was sitting on my usual bench, watching the birds on the rooftops, when a crowd of burly rugby types staggered past. They were drunk. One of them strode up to me and slammed his cap down aggressively onto the bench beside me. My years of working at the bookshop meant that my response was to watch him calmly, without flinching. Then he wrenched my hat from my head, scrumpled it up and placed it on his own head, with a big grin plastered across his face. And there I was, suddenly back at school, back with the old gangs who used to steal all my stuff and destroy it in front of me. So I did what I did at school: I ignored him, and waited for him to get bored by my lack of response.
He snatched up his cap and slammed it down hard onto my head, and it promptly fell off. He had big biceps and his smile was gone, and I thought I'd better get out of there quick. So I stood up, took my hat from his head, and clouted him one. "F**k off," I explained.
He looked dumbstruck, as though he'd never been hit by someone half his size before. I was pretty surprised myself. He balled up his fist and threw a meaty punch at me, but stopped it an inch from my face, scowling, and I stepped around it and walked home.
I still can't quite believe I did that.
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Latest reply: Apr 9, 2004
NEICE-TYPE THING
Posted Apr 1, 2004
Gothly's sister (adopted into the family at age 15 or so) has just had a baby. So now we have our first neice. Type thing. We visited mother and child at hospital yesterday. They're both doing well.
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Latest reply: Apr 1, 2004
MISSING MY CUSTOMERS
Posted Mar 27, 2004
I've been missing my customers lately. Before I gave up work, I had a lot of regulars at my bookshop, and I knew exactly what sort of books they liked, and how they liked to be treated, and something of the dramas of their lives.
I miss the elderly customers who came in to buy writing paper and stamps and cards, to remind their ever-absent families how loved they are; they'd pass the time of day with me, discussing the weather and reminiscing at length.I miss the authors who came in doing the 'author's scuttle' in order to see who was buying their books. I miss the stream of intellectual priests who came in to find material for their sermons among the history, sociology and current science sections of the shop. I miss arguing politics with the lecturers who came to hand in reading lists for the coming semesters. I even miss looming over the shoulders of the schoolboy gangs who came in to shoplift, and watching as one particular small boy filched stolen items from his friends' pockets and palmed them back onto our shelves.
And the eccentrics--bookshops are magnets for eccentrics: druids in flowing robes flicking through 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'; drug addicts browsing the herbal medicine books for ideas; an autistic man who hated yellow and who stood in the middle of the shop reciting the last book he had read, verbatim; a man who wore marigolds everywhere, except in our bookshop, where they got left on the counter while he browsed; a paranoid schizophrenic who sat on our step to drink tea I'd made for him, terrified that a giant fungus would consume him before he finished it--he'd talk to me about God and Satan, dreams and witches.
Well, on my way back from the library yesterday, I stopped for a rest on my customary bench, and a busker approached me. He had bought many music books from me over the years.
"Hallo, [Snailrind]," he said, remembering my name. He sat down beside me and began to talk about his busking--how he had started off with a recorder, and then had saved up and bought himself a clarinet, and was soon going to be able to afford a saxophone to serenade the summer tourists with. He opened his book of musical scores, slotted his clarinet together, and played three wonderful tunes to me--not because he wanted my money, but because he wanted me to hear the music he had started to learn as a customer at my shop.
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Latest reply: Mar 27, 2004
STAR-CROSSED LOVERS?
Posted Mar 24, 2004
On a superficial level, Gothly and I have almost nothing in common. Perhaps that's why we work so well as a couple: plenty to argue about.
Gothly's a sci-fi reading, arachnophobic techno-geek who has always lived in the same area of Wales. I'm a literary, technophobic animal freak, brought up by hippies who moved around all over the place. We frequently try to inspire each other's interest in, say, compilers and Asimov, or beetles and Shakespeare, as the case may be. It doesn't always work.
But a couple of days ago, Gothly stepped into the room and delivered the whole of Hamlet's to-be-or-not-to-be speech to me, from memory, with thespian hand gestures and everything. It was hilarious--and terribly romantic.
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Latest reply: Mar 24, 2004
Snailrind
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