tags and tension at the barbecue

My algorithms test apparently hasn’t been posted because my professor’s in another time zone right now. Suits me fine, as I wasn’t looking forward to taking a 90-minute online test on a Sunday. He did, however, post up information as to what types of questions we’d need to be able to answer. I made myself a nice study guide about minimal spanning trees, Kruskal’s algorithm, Prim’s algorithm, shortest paths, Dijkstra’s algorithm, topological sorting, etc. In the process, I discovered the true use of OS X’s Spotlight tool. I had always thought it just searched file names, which I thought was pretty useless, but on a whim, I typed some words into it that would only be in the contents of some OmniOutliner files containing class notes. Turns out it digs through file contents, too, which is pretty darn useful. I was able to locate the exact files containing information relevant to what would be on the exam, thus making my study guide easier to create. Rock on, OS X.

I’ve implemented Ultimate Tag Warrior for Wordpress and will be [hopefully if I remember] adding tags to posts from here on out. I’ve tagged a few posts from the past but I’m not going to go through a thousand-something entries updating tags. Some of my entries are so generic they wouldn’t even merit a tag! I need to get a tag cloud up and about somewhere so that the tags are more useful. I tried to get one up earlier in the sidebar when a particular tag is searched but I can’t tell how to do that. Doing ‘is_tag’ doesn’t work because that’s some Wordpress-defined function for something different, and doing ‘is_utwtag’ didn’t work either, I think maybe because I called it in the sidebar. I’ll keep plugging away and tweaking at things.

Going with the DRY principle, which is favored by Ruby nuts, I don’t know how I’m going to interweave categories with tags. For example, I talk about OS X above, so I tagged this entry with ‘os x’, but I also put it in my ‘Mac’ category. Too redundant? Helpful redundancy? You decide! Haha, I’ll probably keep on like this; I don’t think it hurts anything.

Todd and I loved Hot Fuzz last night, and it really made me want to see Shawn of the Dead, made by the same people. Haha, one reason to see Hot Fuzz: the lead character kicks a little old English lady in the face. Mind, she was about to shoot him with a double barrel shotgun. On Snark the other day, an English person was talking about being unable to own a handgun due to its legality, but there were a crap-ton of guns in Hot Fuzz. I laughed myself silly at the unintelligible old man with the shed full of shotguns, rifles, pistols, and an undersea mine. The conversation leading up to seeing the inside of that shed went something like, “Do you have a license for that?”, talking about the gun the old man was carrying at that point. The old man responded in some muttered gibberish, which was translated by a local as, “I do for this one.” The lead character nods, making a note, then his head snaps up. Of course, we’re all thinking, “this one?”, and then you see his freaking weapons reserve. It was also funny when the fat, bumbly guy said in his British accent, “Yeah mothafucka!”, which before I had only heard said by angry, buff American men, not pudgy Brits. If you like action movies, especially comedic ones, I recommend Hot Fuzz.

I went to a barbecue at Todd[1]’s today with Todd and Bentley. It was all right, though that group is more Todd’s than mine. I get along with everybody, but the conversation always turns to topics I know or care nothing about, so it gets boring real fast for me. It doesn’t help that Brent gets my dander up with his holier-than-thou attitude all the time. I got a plate of side dishes while the burgers were still cooking and Todd asked, in a teasing tone, “Couldn’t you wait, sweety?” This was a signal to Brent, apparently, to point out that he always waits till the food is entirely ready and everyone can eat. I explained that the side dishes had been ready for a while, and that anyone could eat them with me. He then went on about how it was polite to wait for it all to be ready. I think sometimes I wasn’t raised within the same social norms as other people. Sure, we all differ to some extent, especially across cultures, but we’re all from pretty much the same area, same religious groups, same ethnicity, etc. I didn’t realize we were at a formal event where nothing could be eaten until everyone had sat down at a set table and grace was said; I thought we were at an informal barbecue among friends. That sort of thing always pisses me off because I wonder if I’m in the wrong, but I just can’t see any logical explanation for why me eating some pasta salad while others watched the burgers grill was a problem.