Datatypes, Boniface, commuting and Welsh
I spent today at work working on something that will start to let us add types
to the database of user information. Currently there's no type information,
which means in particular that we can't tell which data are user IDs and which
are actual numbers. So I'm figuring out a way to mark particular fields
automatically. (There are several tens of thousands of them, so I don't want to
do it by hand.) Tomorrow I'll be working on micro-modules, which is a kind of
subroutine in the XML-based state machines that our application is built around.
Also, one of my coworkers is leaving soon, and we're having a party for her (but
probably not tomorrow).
I went to
St Mark's for the
lunchtime service. Fr Sean told us about
St Boniface, since it's
his feast day today, and read us an interesting letter he'd written to St
Cuthbert bewailing how everything was going pear-shaped in his diocese and
comparing it to steering a ship in a storm (it's letter number 35 on
this
page). I never realised Boniface was English before. Someone said he had
more effect on Europe than any other English person, but I'm not sure how you
can quantify that.
Sharon had an interview today to see whether she gets hired permanently to work
where she's currently a temp. I hope she gets it, at least partly for selfish
reasons: it'll mean I can continue sharing a ride with her to the railway
station, and that takes a good half-hour each way off my commute, which would
otherwise be an hour on the bus, twenty minutes' wait, an hour on the train,
half an hour's walk, and then the same back in the evening. Still, I can often
put the time to good use, such as hacking Metacity. Today I'm pretty sure I
fixed
bug 121603,
about the ways to specify the angles of an arc in themes. I haven't yet
tested it enough to check it in, though. Excitingly, there aren't that many more
things to fix in the theme-2 branch.
I have a cunning plan to make use of my tuition benefit. There aren't too many
Welsh tutors in this suburb of Philadelphia, but I thought we could find one who
could teach us over VoIP;
helpful people asked questions, and now perhaps we have found
one. This could be very interesting, and very helpful.