dry

So. It might not be such a good idea when on an overcast day you choose to walk to the movie theatre with just a book in hand, leaving your bag and umbrella behind.

Sure. The book is useful when you’re waiting in line or right before the movie’s about to start. It can be difficult concentrating with all the ads flashing in your face, but it’s not impossible. Minutes otherwise wasted can be gainfully employed.

A little drizzle, you think, this won’t be a problem. But rainfall does not ask for your permission. It doesn’t make a judgement call to fall based on your condition. It just falls. You slide the book under your shirt. That should be enough protection, you think.

To compound matters you decide to pick up some food on the way back. Hunger must be met, even at the expense of rational decision-making. Now you’re carrying a bag of food in one hand and ensuring that your book doesn’t fall out of your shirt with the other.

When it pours, you know it’s raining. Mostly because there’s water pouring from the sky. You battle the drops as you walk alone. There are many more steps to take before you get home. You do not win this battle. You’re are soaked from head to toenail. Your shirt is entirely wet and water is seeping through to your skin. Yet for some odd reason (but most probably lack of reason) you hope the book is still “safe”, still dry – somehow.

Like yourself, the book did not fare well. Not all hope is lost. While your protection mechanisms failed, it is important to lay the book still and let it dry. This part is key and therefore worth repeating. You have to let the book dry. Let it dry.

If the ink does not bleed the content is preserved. The pages will be wrinkled but the function unharmed.

Hope is realized. Not all is lost.

flawed.

I am sure it is a character flaw. I am not sure if it is the character flaw. You know, the one that does you in.

I will start things. The trouble is that I will also start other things. Some folks, I suppose, handle this all fine. I, on the other hand, tear myself down the dotted line. It is not as if I cannot handle separately the things that accumulate on my plate. I could even handle the accumulation if I could properly divide my attention. Just if I were able to focus.

Given the amount of time I have and the things I start, I ought to be able to do them. As simple as divide and conquer. Yet for some reason, that I have things to do deters me from doing anything. Silly, I know.

And yet it is so. So very flawed.

on beauty

Here I quote judofyr from a Hacker News thread. The following exemplifies why _why wasn’t just a coder, he was also a poet.

Interestingly, camping.rb on the other hand is not very pretty or correct: http://github.com/camping/camping/blob/master/lib/camping.rb, and that’s also what makes it so beautiful in my opinion.

Oh well, let me finish with a little quote from _why:

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 02:47:39PM +0200, zimbatm wrote:  
> This is not that hard to do. Maybe I should add some shortening tricks  
> document. I propose platterizing to be done only before release.  
 
No, let's not have rules.  I don't feel comfortable with having  
coding standards or any protocol on Camping.  The point of Camping  
is to have very ugly, tricky code that goes against all the rules that  
people make for "beautiful" code these days.  To show that ugly code  
can do beautiful things, maybe.  
 
I don't want to demonize anyone here, I just want to express the  
ideas that make Camping different.  Camping's personality is 80x50.  
It is like the little gears of a watch that are all meshed together  
into a tight little mind-bending machine.  The challenge of Camping  
isn't to figure out how to automate obfuscation.  The challenge is  
to bring new tricks into the code that push Ruby's parser and make  
everyone look twice.  
 
Not all code needs to be a factory, some of it can just be origami.  
 
_why