Monday, 14th May, 2007

Speed Deprincessing

deprincess random

In which Siobhan confesses to being a terrible parent.

I can't remember if I mentioned anything about what I'm up to this week or not, and I haven't the energy to go back and check, so apologies if I sound like a stuck record.

This week is the 'last week of term', so to speak, and I figured it would be useful for all concerned if I was in work every day of it. With the usual state of affairs — commuting every day — I think I'd end up on Friday night completely knackered, and penniless, so I took some steps yesterday evening and found myself somewhere to crash each night.

Quite pleased with myself for that really And rather looking forward to it too.

But it was later on at night, three quarters of the way down a bottle and readying myself for bed when a terrible thought struck me:

"Shit. The cats!"

I'd completely forgotten to get anyone to feed them while I was away

So, I've been hovering around the front door for the past half an hour, waiting for my neighbours to leave for work so that I can grab them and ask them to keep an eye on the kittens for me.

"Yeah sure, no problem", they said. "By the way, did you hear about the burgularly?"

Yesterday, when I got home, there was one of those "Someone near you has been burgled" police notes waiting on the doormat. For some reason, I read it as "You have been burgled" at first, and had a dizzy moment of panic.

I've been living in this house for nearly thirteen years now, and (touch all available wooden surfaces) I've not had even the hint of someone trying to break in. I'm obviously (*duh* Siobhan) rather pleased about that, because there's thousands of pounds worth of kit sitting here — and you just know that most of it would end up getting sold for £20 to buy smack.

(Or something)

"Yeah, bit scarey that. I'm quite nervous about leaving the house empty all week now."

"Tell you what, I'll have a quick scout around when I feed the cats, just to check everything's OK if you like."

Cue Siobhan running around her house in a state of frantic panic, shoving dresses and panties and stockings and (*ahem*) toys into drawers and cupboards.

New World Notes: Autocad Into Second Life

link secondlife

Oh bugger. That was on my list of things to make.

...no really I'd arranged to meet up with our AutoCAD technician at some point over the nexxt week — partly to show him what I've been doing with the plans he's been sending me, and partly so that I can pick his brains about what formats AutoCAD can export to, with a view to making something that parses the output in a similar way to my SVG script.

"If I can make something that works seamlessly", I thought, "fame and fortune will follow".

I do, sometimes, I must confess, feel like I'm working in a completely isolated bubble sometimes. Perhaps it's my own fault for not being more 'collaborative', or 'self-marketing', or something, but it does get me a little down when some of the things I make don't quite get the coverage that I think they deserve.

I remember getting mildly frustrated a while back — just after I posted the HOWTO on using QuickTime TeXML to do richly-formatted text on a prim — that everyone was applauding a prim-and-texture-based text tool, and completely ignoring what I'd done.

(God, I sound like a teenager, don't I? )

Makes you wonder, I guess, just how many people there are out there working independently on little scripts and programmes, quietly releasing them to the world, but feeling like they're shouting into a vacuum.

...

Anyways. Following a minor SL-based snafu at our place recently, me and Cubist are being courted heavily by the PR Department apparently. So maybe I can get them to help me promote some of the stuff we've done more agressively.