CSS

Well, I got a book on CSS from Borders. I figured I should learn the stuff. There's not that much too it really. But I think part of it is the fact that it's a really excellent book. It's one of those "visual quickstart guides."

I was thinking about genetic algorithms(as I seem to do daily) and I thought if I could apply them to predicting the stock market or horse races, I could apply them to my job search. I'd really like to find a programming job. Anyway, I could take a bunch of job hunting techniques, see which ones work, then keep the good ones, slightly mutate them, and let them compete again. Sounds good in theory, right? ;)

I love it.

I love having to program something I have never done and having to figure out how the hell to do it. Man it's nice to be able to work symbolically with arguments I put into things like:

document.getElement.ByID(div+i).innerHTML=something.responseText;

and I can fill in a bunch of divs at one time.


Now I will go listen to MiniPop and have their beautiful melodies haunt me.

Damn, maybe I am good

So I worked on the chat client assemblage again today and figured out that the best way to do it was probably...the way I was doing it. I looked at many ways for the web service to store the state variables. (There are state variables for web services). All of it came down to the variables being tied to a specific user session, which wouldn't do me any good. I looked at cache, session, even using a small dataBase. The dB would take too long, longer than just writing a file to the server. I may move to another interesting project. I still gotta get me a job. UPDATE: It works, and it fetches text as a person types. So in midsentence you'll get an update then it will fill in the rest. Thank you setInterval.

Almost Social Networking

I got all excited and decided that I could make my own Google Wave. I started writing code yesterday afternoon and I have a chat client...that works like a very simple chat client. I used AJAX type stuff to post the text in divs. The way(this is ultra tricky, I know) that data is passed between instances is by saving the text to a common text file which is then periodically viewed by the Javascript and posted. It's ultra low tech but it does work. I wonder if I could do it with a web service. Almost certain I could. I learned a lot and it was fun too. Crazy. The thing is web-based, by the way.

Job Search and New Page Idea

I'm officially in the job hunt now, and I'm looking for volunteer opportunities because my resume isn't exactly overflowing with development experiences. I program in C#, ASP.Net, JavaScript, AJAX.

I'm thinking of a next project--it would be social networking in a sense, but musical. The idea is that two or more people will rate a piece of computer generated music. What ever piece is rated highest (of a group of 5) will move to the next round, be mutated, then voted on. The crux is that people will get to do it "together". It would be interesting to see how ratings are different depending on who a person is paired with.