Wednesday, June 23, 15:40 CDT
I just finished reading
The
Practice Effect, by David Brin. An enjoyable book of the "Earth
scientist winds up in another world with different physical laws, is mistaken
for wizard" type. It's got all the ingredients: Evil Warlord, Beautiful
Princess, cute-but-useful alien sidekick, bad puns and SFnal references - and
a nice twist on the "different physical laws" bit. Good reading for a
summer afternoon.
Went to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me this past Saturday. If you've got no objection to scatological humor and constant innuendo, I'd say it's worth seeing. Not nearly as funny as it could've been, but there were enough good moments to make it worthwhile. (The Jerry Springer scene, for example.)
I've been messing with vi a bit lately (in fact I'm using it, with considerable difficulty, to write this) I can see how it could be a powerful tool, in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. An experienced vi user must be able to (argh, moving back to XEmacs...) manipulate large blocks of text with surgical accuracy and almost frightening speed.
That said, I'm not sure how much use I'll ever get out of it. While the command set isn't huge, it strikes me as much less intuitive than most other editors I've learned. Maybe because my mind just doesn't seem to wrap around a modal editor very well.
At any rate, I'll try getting enough experience with vi to use it should the need arise, so maybe I'll adapt.