Day jobs

professional assassin

  On 6/21/2010 at 6:30 PM, Masonic Boom said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 6:28 PM, Dan C said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 6:18 PM, BCM said:

I need to earn a certain amount just to afford to live in SW London...

 

Innit bruv.

 

+1

+2

blue-collar worker.

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 11:49 AM, hahathhat said:

I am somewhat OCD (or aspergers or something)... Messy code drives me bananas, and I will sit there for hours until I have balanced the code out.

 

Oh good, I'm glad it's not just me then... I'm pretty anal about arguably pointless aspects of source code. It drives me nuts when I see whitespace like tabs and spaces at the end of lines or on supposedly blank lines. In all fairness, the latter does have a practical problem: it makes

d}

a lot more destructive in vim than it's meant to be.

i use emacs.

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 11:49 AM, hahathhat said:

I also find myself "balancing" out melodies and harmonies... so it certainly plays into music as well.

 

I really should stop myself trying to make geometrically pleasing shapes in my music, such as making the arrangement perfectly symmetrical, if it gets in the way of the music actually sounding good. It sounds like maybe you also have to work with letting your quirks work for you rather than against you?

If you do nothing, there is no imbalance. But that's boring. So you go WHAM SLAM sljdkfjdsklf and then figure out how to take it back to the center.

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

I can only work while listening to silence, or ambient music, hence I've got a lot of Brian Eno and Pete Namlook albums. SAW II is indispensable.

ambient's no good for me in that regard, actually. just need something i can type along to without it grabbing too much of my brain.

  On 6/21/2010 at 6:12 PM, Obel said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

Yes! This is "the zone", and it's what many people live for. It's why hackers stay up all night, why many make music, and I'm pretty sure for some people it's why they have sex. You completely forget about everything you're worrying about and even your physical surroundings and just properly concentrate on something until it's finished. It's a wonderful thing.

 

Yeah, the zone. I'm still trying to find whatever it is that gets me in the zone. Creatively I mean.

 

Ugh.

presuming you're not your sarcastic clitterhaus self --

it's that zen shit. you can't force it. the harder you press, the further away it goes. the ideal situation is a saturday morning where you like up kind of late but not really, think about playing xbox but wind up playing with one of your synths instead... then it starts to take hold, and at 9pm you're bouncing an mp3.

financial adviser.

you all make me sick.

  On 6/21/2010 at 9:33 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 6:12 PM, Obel said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

Yes! This is "the zone", and it's what many people live for. It's why hackers stay up all night, why many make music, and I'm pretty sure for some people it's why they have sex. You completely forget about everything you're worrying about and even your physical surroundings and just properly concentrate on something until it's finished. It's a wonderful thing.

 

Yeah, the zone. I'm still trying to find whatever it is that gets me in the zone. Creatively I mean.

 

Ugh.

 

presuming you're not your sarcastic clitterhaus self --

 

it's that zen shit. you can't force it. the harder you press, the further away it goes. the ideal situation is a saturday morning where you like up kind of late but not really, think about playing xbox but wind up playing with one of your synths instead... then it starts to take hold, and at 9pm you're bouncing an mp3.

LOL! I'm not Clitterhaus!

Yeah, I'm not trying to do everything in the world to find my.. thing (lol), but it would be nice to get lost in something.

  On 6/21/2010 at 9:33 PM, hahathhat said:

it's that zen shit. you can't force it. the harder you press, the further away it goes.

The other day I transcribed an old piece of music of mine from the sequencer I used to use into the one I now use, and tried to make some nice patches in my synth of choice, with the aim to make a better version now that I have better equipment. It sounded much worse than the original. Defeated, I mucked around a bit with a noise generator and band pass filter pitched to the keyboard, and after a few hours I'd made a really good start on my latest track, which now sounds very Richie Hawtin esque. So yes, not trying to force your creativity, just letting it come of its own accord, is often the way.

I really need a new job, I am seriously going to stab my boss up if I have to stay there any longer! Any suggestions for a guy who has worked in a pub for the last 11 years and completely out of touch with the real world?

*totally regretting posting this already*

I manage a print shop, and do a lot of graphic design and type setting on the side. Its a fun job because I create stuff all day and have all these resources to work on my own projects with, but it is also really draining because I use up so much creativity in a given day on other peoples projects and find when I get home there isn't a lot left to work with.

bum

What kind of cat is that in your avatar?

I do stuff with music and audio.

  On 6/22/2010 at 5:09 AM, scones to die for said:

What kind of cat is that in your avatar?

Looks like a Lynx.

media developer and technician for academia

photography / video / graphic design / web design / animation / programming / music / sound design / lighting engineer / live and studio sound / technical support / instructor etc.

they get a lot for their money...

unemployed...not so bad...till im broke

it's my day, night, weekend, vacation, freetime job: graphic/interaction/print design. i'm working in a new tribe for four months now, and i think this is the best fucking job ever. i work 10 hours a day, everyday, and still every morning i wake up i feel good and ready to face the day

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 11:49 AM, hahathhat said:

I am somewhat OCD (or aspergers or something)... Messy code drives me bananas, and I will sit there for hours until I have balanced the code out.

 

Oh good, I'm glad it's not just me then... I'm pretty anal about arguably pointless aspects of source code. It drives me nuts when I see whitespace like tabs and spaces at the end of lines or on supposedly blank lines. In all fairness, the latter does have a practical problem: it makes

d}

a lot more destructive in vim than it's meant to be.

sat back just now and realized i particularly liked a segment of code:

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7606/codeaesthetics.png

it's not so much that i'm anal about whitespace.... rather, i want it to look nice when you sit back, squint, and blur your eyes a bit. same goes for music.

  On 6/23/2010 at 12:58 PM, hahathhat said:

 

sat back just now and realized i particularly liked a segment of code:

 

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7606/codeaesthetics.png

 

it's not so much that i'm anal about whitespace.... rather, i want it to look nice when you sit back, squint, and blur your eyes a bit. same goes for music.

:Zoe sits back and admires the whitespace, noting the correct use of indentation, then gets all tense again as she notices inline styling, a lack of <label> elements, inline calls to specific JavaScript functions, and what looks suspiciously like a table used for stylistic purposes:

Also, I'd really recommend OOP. Seriously, it'll rock your world. Try a framework such as CakePHP. And jQuery. After two or three projects, it'll halve your programming time, at least.

  On 6/23/2010 at 2:19 PM, ZoeB said:

Also, I'd really recommend OOP. Seriously, it'll rock your world. Try a framework such as CakePHP. And jQuery. After two or three projects, it'll halve your programming time, at least.

Believe me, I know. The whole company is in panic mode, though, due to some multi-million dollar deadline at the end of the month. In this situation, as a consultant, my authority is somewhat limited.

  On 6/23/2010 at 12:58 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 3:46 PM, ZoeB said:

  On 6/21/2010 at 11:49 AM, hahathhat said:

I am somewhat OCD (or aspergers or something)... Messy code drives me bananas, and I will sit there for hours until I have balanced the code out.

 

Oh good, I'm glad it's not just me then... I'm pretty anal about arguably pointless aspects of source code. It drives me nuts when I see whitespace like tabs and spaces at the end of lines or on supposedly blank lines. In all fairness, the latter does have a practical problem: it makes

d}

a lot more destructive in vim than it's meant to be.

 

sat back just now and realized i particularly liked a segment of code:

 

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7606/codeaesthetics.png

 

it's not so much that i'm anal about whitespace.... rather, i want it to look nice when you sit back, squint, and blur your eyes a bit. same goes for music.

What the FUCK is that shit with the table - I don't see any tabular data output...

  On 6/23/2010 at 3:07 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 6/23/2010 at 2:19 PM, ZoeB said:

Also, I'd really recommend OOP. Seriously, it'll rock your world. Try a framework such as CakePHP. And jQuery. After two or three projects, it'll halve your programming time, at least.

 

Believe me, I know. The whole company is in panic mode, though, due to some multi-million dollar deadline at the end of the month. In this situation, as a consultant, my authority is somewhat limited.

Ah, yes. Good point, well made. :) I'm glad to not currently be in that kind of situation. It's so frustrating when you know how to help out to a much larger extent than you're allowed to.

By the way, how do you pronounce your handle? Ha-hath-hat?

WHOA. I mean, I know I'm slightly lysdexic and all, but I never noticed that it wasn't actually hathathat.

My brane really doesn;t work proper right slightly.

Also: I have just been teaching the two new marketing girls not to be stupid about computers. I am slightly broken at this point.

i have 1 month left on a project developing/implementing a computer/software tracking program for a college. then it's off to unemployment land unless the state budget somehow recovers.

  On 6/23/2010 at 3:28 PM, Joyrex said:

What the FUCK is that shit with the table - I don't see any tabular data output...

i was just posting it because it had a nice shape. like a wisp of smoke. funny that people dove right into the nitty-gritty.

to explain more, they're having me add pages into an existing system with dozens of existing pages. for better or worse, i have to follow the shit lead they've set... as far as i can go is to shape the mound of crap they've handed me into a pleasant shape. that page is for a DHTML modal dialog. javascript from another page builds the window then fires off an xmlhttprequest to pull in that as the content. then javascript populates it, mostly. i pull in a bunch of stuff through php to make my life easier, because they're using some godawful webservice/soap/htc on the browser end.

did i mention this whole system is IE-required? no firebug for hahathhat.

they do have beer at the office. i am ending this part of the post before i have more of it

  On 6/23/2010 at 4:21 PM, ZoeB said:

By the way, how do you pronounce your handle? Ha-hath-hat?

it's just a keymash from some night when i was feeling particularly quantum. there are many ways to render it. i wrote a post on it with a lot of thought and detail, but it seems to be gone from watmm's time machine. from memory, here are a few renderings:

- ha-hath-hat (sure why not)

- stuttering hihat noise

- HAHA at that

- "asshat" with a gay lisp

Can I just call you poo merchant?