1 July 1999: Learning Stuff

Thursday, 1 July 1999:

Learning Stuff

Hey, I've been going to the fitness center for a month now!

Results? Well, my shorts are progressively feeling a little looser, and John said the other day that he thinks I look a little trimmer. I can also feel the muscles developing in my legs and arms. The torso muscles are harder to sense (guess where all my weight goes when I gain?). I suspect after my next belt-tightening that it will be time to buy new shorts with a smaller waist size. That should be cool.

I wonder if I'll ever buy smaller shirts, though. My shoulders are broad enough that smaller shirts might not feel comfortable even if I lose weight.

It was a little cooler today, and should be even cooler over the weekend. I've gotten conflicting feedback as to whether the recent heat wave is normal for the Bay Area in the summer, or not. As I think I've said before, I'd prefer highs around 80 or just over. Any warmer gets uncomfortable.

I've been teaching myself Objective-C at work. It's a language which much old NeXT software was developed in, and therefore which much new-generation Apple software is being built in. There's also a lot of Java work done around Apple, and it's unclear (to me, at least) if Java will ultimately prevail altogether, or if there will always be a mix. I'd guess that Java will never be used for much of the OS stuff, since it's just too high-level. But hey, the way technology advances...

Obj-C is basically C with a Lisp-like class system (i.e., lots of parentheses - or square brackets, in this case). It's fairly straightforward for the most part, although it has some interesting cruft in it, like all the objects being pointers (just what I want in a C derivative - more pointers!), and the memory allocation and freeing system. But it seems like a decent thing overall. I guess the typing system is supposed to be very cool, but I haven't really had the opportunity to use it yet, since I haven't yet done anything fancy.

I have been having some bizarre errors in my Obj-C test program, which I don't think have anything to do with my code. I'm not really sure what's causing them; gremlins, maybe.

Anyway, I figure learning Obj-C will serve me well at Apple, since it will let me get into some of the existing code to read, debug and/or otherwise work with it.

Useless news: The Starcraft: Brood War expansion is about to be released for the Mac, almost on schedule (early July rather than June release). Yes, another great way to waste a bunch of time!

Good comics this week? Well, it was a light haul. The new issue of Avengers, beginning an Ultron story arc. An especially lame issue of JLA, involving the League's reaction to the amazingly lame plot developments over in Batman, where Gotham City suffered an earthquake and has been walled off from the rest of the country. And a mediocre Wildstorm five-set of titles involving their main characters at different points in history. Obliquely interesting, but seemingly unnecessary.

So, not a strong week, graphic-novel-wise.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)