Heartbeat post.

Filed under: misc by tamber
7 December 2014 @ 19:52

And, as is routine, another "Holy hell, I'm lousy at this blog thing" post. I think it's pretty much required by now; the kind of thing I must produce occasionally or I'll not be allowed to claim I have a blog. Perhaps I shouldn't.

If this blog were a potted plant, it'd be a little brown, shrivelled stump.

However, I'm not going to let a lack of anything to say stop me from producing noise that nobody's listening to.

Werk

On a work front, I'm still puttering my way through this apprenticeship; clinging on by my fingernails, I feel, some days. I guess I'm really not cut out for this employment thing. I'm bored sick of sweeping the floors, hosing fermenting coleslaw (or worse) off stuff that's been brought back from its owner for testing.

Had a few... personality conflicts with my boss -- and I suspect a few to come with my co-workers -- too; I don't feel all that much a part of the company's social environment, particularly not when they all demand I go to the work's christmas do and drink.

Damnit, I'll drink if I want to, not when other people want me to. So I guess I'll be getting a bunch of stick for not going to this years' do.

So, I'm hoping that, when I finish getting my qualification; that I can see a route to somewhere I'm happier being.

Projekts

On a project front, pretty much everything's stalled again, and once again I've picked up more work to do. I've taken over trying to fix/update a gaming community's copy of Virtual Training System.

So far, my changes have all been around de-cramping the UI, which is coming along reasonably well!

From this: Cramped
interface, with tiny tiny buttons.

To this: Expanded interface.

It's still pretty lousy, and there's plenty more stuff I need to move around; and it's a long way from my goal.

I expect, very soon, to reach a point where I just snap at trying to navigate a code-base that seems to have 'evolved' through various modifying hands, which has muddled it quite heavily.

There's not a lot of documentation within it, quite a lot of what is in there is in French, and there's quite a few decisions made in the code that I am not quite sure of the rationale behind.

It also bears all the wonderful scars of "I'll just comment this out" version-control.

Once I get to the point that I make the UI better for our group, I'll probably start looking at trying to add new features; but don't hold your breath on that...

Finally...

Well, that's about all I can blather on about, really; it's been a pretty dull 7 or so months. I just settle into a "sleep, work, eat, repeat" pattern. I'd like to say I'd made something really awesome, or learned how to do something really neat; but ...I guess I live bland?

...Bland Aid 2014?