Socks!

Sock One (sorry about the blur, but trust me. It's crappy.)

Close up of the hole where I failed three needle bind off.


Sock two

It's socky! I rule!

Wow, I suck with updating.

I said I'd post pictures of my first fair isle piece and here they are!

Back:


Front:

Whee!

I am trying to teach myself how to crochet so I can make toys. It's more difficult than learning to knit was but I think that's because I learned to knit first.

The fair isle piece will be up when I can find the camera. I've narrowed it down to what corner of the house it's in.

Starting an Old World Werewolf game. (Old World of Darkness, not that twee new crap.) Learned that I need to write a program to control the NPCs 'cause I had way too many of them and combat took for fucking ever.

And calculus is killing me. Yay, calc!

Finished my first fair isle piece. Should have pics up soonish.

Realized I've been making a stupid mistake with some of the coding I'm doing because I forgot about the fall-through option of switch statements. It's a minor thing and not going to be a big performance issue 'cause the program's so small but it's sloppy so I'm irritated.

Yeah, it's been a month since last I posted. I have been in a handbasket and didn't quite realize it until I saw the Wood of Suicides. Fortunately, things seem to be powering down a bit.

I have started my firstsecond attempt at Fair Isle today. The first attempt went fine until I saw that I was making ruffles. At least now I know how, right?

Pics shall appear when it's done, but I'm using the Horde symbol off of Ravelry to make a (small) pillow.

Don't you love it when you're halfway done with a program and realize you've screwed up halfway into it and need to rewrite a good deal of it.

ARGH.

Stack overflow was caused by a buffer stupidity. Note to self: const all array maxs from now on. Moron.

I've been working on the Dark Heresy Character Generator. Because bubblesorts are evil, I tried using a quicksort.

Now I'm getting weird stack errors. I give up for the night.

Whee! Updates have been lacking because my math class has bent me over a table and doesn't use lube.

Haven't knit since the cow as the cow is still in pieces. Eventually, the cow will no longer be in pieces, but the Mayan End of the World may have happened before then.

I've restarted the Dark Heresy character generator and I've been playing with the idea of a Dark Heresy simulator. Testing how dangerous the creatures in the Monster's Manual or whatever it is they call it.

I've also been playing with the idea of writing again but I can't find a plot with both hands, a Randy MacNally and a scent dog. And it's kind of hard to write without a plot, ya know?

Lessee. (Why does that spellcheck but spellcheck doesn't?) I'm hand making a hammock using a 1785 pattern. I'm almost done with the tabling and soon I'll've finished the grommets and be done, done done! Then I just need to figger a way to hang the bastartd.

Currently Reading

The Vampire Slayers' Field Guide to the Undead
Suspect Zero, both by Jonathan Maberry.

Currently Coding

Dark Heresy Character Generator

Currently Knitting

Nothing, I'm sewing. I'm a manly man.

Things I Should be Doing Instead of This

My polisci take home test. Go me!

I have not been coding in a while , mostly because when attempting to move the code from one machine to another, it got wiped out. I am massively irritated. I have not been knitting because I've been working on a hammock. Eventually, there'll be pics of that, when it's done. It'll take for freaking ever, though.

The cow is suffering from second sock syndrome. It's stuffed but still in pieces. It's taking up room and quietly driving the Wife nuts, but I just feel...meh about out.

Gaming has been mostly in the console, less on the table top, although I am seriously considering LARPing. As a Dark Elf. In full face black make-up. In June. I'm insane.

Aside from that, I'm killing myself for school, as per usual. Next week, I get to camp out in front of the Dean's office until he agrees to see me and lets me back in to the University. Whee!

I may start whipping up something small, like opera-type gloves, so I don't have to paint my hands, 'cause I think that I'm going to be waiting a while. Yay.

I keep putting off putting the cow together. I have a horn filled with stuffing. The rest of the cow is sitting in pieces except for the other horn, which is half-assedly half stuffed. I have been sort of waylaid by marlinespike seamanship. I wanna make a Nelson era hammock and I've got everything bar the canvas set up.

I'll get back to me knitting soonish, I think. I just periodically get on these kicks and need to wait until my interest dies or goes back to normal levels. And right now I'm on a Patrick O'Brian kick 'cause he is the awesome.

So anyway, um, yeah. Finished cow. Soon.

The soccer ball is becoming problematic. I seem to have either knit the pieces wrong or something. Grumble, grumble. So how am I going to fix this? I'm going to try to start putting together stuffed toys. Yay. A friend of mine is with podling and I was thinking of making it a bear. Or something.

Code? What code?

Soccer Ball

This is the first half of the soccer ball. I'm about 2/3rds done with the white panels. More pictures to follow.

The I Ching problems turned out to being a problem with using an array. I am now mostly done with it. I just need to finish figuring out the moving lines and then, bam. Hexegrams done. Then the fun stuff of figuring out which hexegram.

I am done with the Wife's gloves. I am stopping gloves for the time being. Bleh.

Now I'm gonna try and knit a soccer ball.

And I'm having weird coding errors with the I Ching program. Oy.

Haven't been posting because the DB2 Connect problems have been following me where ever I go and it's coloring my entire outlook. Still working on the Wife's gloves, though my wrist has been locking up strangely. Not really reading much, although I'm thinking of going back to Dracula because that's the one book that brings me comfort.

My new compiler came in. I'll probably not get to sleep until dawn.

Hot damn.

Bleh

I was really hoping my compiler would show today. Almost to the thumb gusset of the Wife's first glove.

Currently Reading
Dharma Book: Thousand Whispers, the last Dharma book I've been able to get my hands on
Ninja: The True Story of Japan's Secret Warrior Class

Currently Coding
Nothing! I don't have a working compiler! Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

Currently Knitting
Wife gloves.

Things I Should be Doing Instead of This
I should probably be getting ready for classes starting tomorrow...nah.

The War Effort

I realize that there's no one reading this blog except the Wife, but eventually someone else will find it and, if they're at all like me, they'll swing back to the beginning and come across this.

Here's the thing. I cannot join the military. I'm on brain medication (SSRIs and antipsychotics) and not even the Coast Guard will take you if you need medication to function. As far as I'm aware, they don't take insulin dependent diabetics either which sort of makes sense. I mean, what happens if you're stuck somewhere and you can't get hold of your medication? I've long come to grips with this, although I did go through a "What do you mean, you won't take me" phase and a "Well, if I can survive without my pills, they'll take me" phase which eventually lead to a "Jesus Christ, I'm the worst kind of asshole without my pills even when I'm not trying to kill myself" phase.

Anyway, instead of serving my country, I'm trying to do my bit elsewhere. Which brings me to this post.

"Gee, Zach," I hear you say. "This isn't WWII. The troops can buy socks and sweaters and stuff. We don't need to make 'em." This is true. However, some of the stuff they can't buy. Like helmetliners. And, honestly, it means something to get something hand made.

"But Zach," I hear you say. "I'm a bleeding heart liberal! I'm against the war!" Great. I'm not a big fan of it either. But a lot of these people didn't join the Armed Forces for much more than the paid college education. And even if they did, so what? To use the tired rhetoric, it's our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters over there. My father fought in the Vietnam War. I am immensely proud of my generation for not treating our returning soldiers the way my father's generation treated him. You can be against the war and still feel compassion for the people caught in it.

"Okay, Zach," I hear you say. "What's the point, then?"

The point is that there are a whole bunch of websites out there that will give you a pattern and an address to send it. So if you've got some spare time or some spare yarn, put something together. You'll brighten someone's day.

And yes, I'm including a list of sites.

http://www.citizensam.org/ Citizen S.A.M. is Citizen Support America's Military. It has the helmet liner pattern, patterns for quilts for veterans and some nifty patterns for the K-9 units.

http://www.theshipsproject.com/ The Ships Project was started slightly after September 11. It sends hats and slippers and stuff to the troops.

http://www.redsweaters.org/ Red Sweaters is not a protest site. It's a way of humanizing some of the numbers coming out of the War on Terror. I mean, honestly, when I see that the "Current Number of dead American Soldiers" is 4229 the only thing I can think of is that it's a kinda large number. Nina Rosenberg, the woman in charge of Red Sweaters felt the same way, so she hangs a G.I Joe sized red sweater from a tree in her front yard for every dead American soldier.

Anyway, periodically, I'm going to go off about various charities that take both money and knit things. Mostly because part of what makes us human is our ability to care for others.

It is entirely possible that the problems I've been having are because I'm not using .Net 2008 on Vista. If this is the case, I shall be...annoyed.

Skipped a Day

Didn't post yesterday mostly 'cause I spent all of it running around doing errands with the Wife. Also, my folks were in town and that caused added running. We started in Bedford at nineish and were out for about 12 hours. And honestly? I just wanted to veg out in front of the ST:TNG and not have to thing.

Anyhoo. I'm putting the Dark Hersey thingy on a back burner for a bit. Mostly because I've moved the books to the RPG bookshelf and I've still not gotten round to moving the files from Thoth to TAPoJ. I'm certain I will get back to is (mostly because I love randomizer to an almost stupid degree).

So instead, I'm going to try and bring together an I Ching program. Yeah, I know, there's software out there already but, hey, what's one more, right? Besides, there needs to be more DOS programs, damn it.

Currently Reading
Dharma Book Bone Flowers
Arms and Armor of the Samurai: The History of Weponry in Ancient Japan

Currently Coding
The begining of the I Ching thingy. I'll be using the three coin method until I can work out a way to do the yarrow stalks.

Currently Knitting
The Wife's fingerless gloves and a nice bamboo yarn. That's annoying.

Things I Should Be Doing Instead of This
Nothing! Three day weekend!

So apparently I can't leave my needles empty for a day. I'm making the Wife's gloves as I've found a nice bamboo yarn that's in worsted weight. Hah.

The DB2 Connect Problem

Hokay, so here's the problem in its gory.

I have a .cpp file by the name of ininfo.cpp. It asks for a whole slew of headers. It took me for freaking ever to find those headers and once I did and added them I expected things to work, right? Sadly, the specific header "sqlutil.h" seems to be a problem child. It keeps popping up and asking for it, even though I've commented it out. And when it's asked, it can't be opened.

In fact, here's the error code I'm getting, verbatim.

1>c:\users\fry's electronics\documents\visual studio 2005\projects\db2 work thing\db2 work thing\ininfo.cxx(66) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'sqlutil.h': No such file or directory

And yet it is in the directory. It's been added to the project. I've commented the damn thing out.

I have NO FUCKING CLUE what it is I'm doing wrong.

Currently Reading
Dharma Book: Bone Flowers
The Complete I Ching

Currently Coding
Dark Heresy generator program? What Dark Heresy generator program? I have a work problem that is taking up my life!

Currently Knitting
My needles are empty. I shall probably start making the Wife's gloves soonish. Like later tonight.

Things I Should Be Doing Instead of This
Various errands, but I have Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD and it's Data's Day which may be my favoritest episode ever.

And lo, I did survive another year on this planet

Still having trouble with the DB2 program. All the includes are there and added and it's still not finding one, even when I comment it out. Bizarre. Looks like Da will have to take a look at it tomorrow when he comes up.

Currently Reading
Dharma Book: Bone Flowers
The Analects by Confucius

Currently Coding
The Dark Heresy thing has been put on hold until I find out what's up with my work stuff.

Currently Knitting
The beanie hat thing is almost done. Which means I either go back to the Eternal Blanket or start on the gloves for everyone I know.

Things I Should Be Doing Instead of This
The massive cleaning, 'specially since my folks are coming up tomorrow.

Well, I finally figured out the problem with the DB2 thing. It wants a couple of header files that weren't included. Somehow the boss got them but I didn't. So now I'm waiting for them to show up in the email. Yay.

The Begining of the Begining

So, here I am, attempting once again to force myself to start writing on a daily basis. Problem: My life is boring. So! I shall talk about the things going on in my life that I am making. Like my coding. That that hat I'm knitting. And the Kindred of the East game I'm planning.

So now I'm not only boring, I'm geeky and boring. Yay!

Currently Reading
The 1000 Hells: A Guide to the Yomi World and those who dwell for V:TM
The Analects by Confucius

Currently Coding
I'm working on a random character generator for Dark Heresy. Now all I need to do is port the code over to the new laptop

Currently Knitting
A little beanie type hat thing made from the same yarn as the convertible gloves. (Which, by the way, everyone I've ever met seems to want a pair of now. Yay.)

Things I Should Be Working on Instead of This
The DB2 Connect Code
The massive cleaning so the Wife can go kamikaze with the windex