Even more random than usual

Spring is still a month or two away, but it was making its eventual presence known today with blue skies and a lovely warm nor’wester (this is the only time of year when anyone in Christchurch would ever describe a nor’wester as “lovely”!!).  It was rumoured to have reached 20 degrees mid-afternoon – we certainly had all the windows open in the office, and I was regretting the warm top I was wearing.  I’m sure the temperature will plummet again soon enough, but for now it’s nice to have a reminder that winter won’t last forever.


The talented Tartankiwi has issued a challenge to do something new and creative with the pattern she designed for a paper-pieced butterfly.  I think I’ll have to give it a go, although I’ve got no idea what I’ll do – or rather, I’ve got lots of ideas, but I suspect most of them will be impractically complex and way beyond my skill level.  But then, when have I ever let a little thing like not actually knowing how to do something stop me giving it a go?  Half the fun is in the figuring it out as you go along 😉
Anyway, watch this space for further developments…


And talking of challenges, I managed to complete the coding challenge I mentioned one of my workmates had given me.  The challenge involved setting up a page to request images from the incredibly useful Placekitten website (I’m not sure what it’s actually useful for, other than supplying pictures of kittens in varying sizes, but if you’re ever in need of a specifically-sized picture of a kitten, now you know where to find one…).  My webpage had to have a form where you could enter a width and height, and it would retrieve and display the appropriately-sized kitten image from Placekitten.  Not hugely complex in programming terms, but I was determined to try and work this one out from first principles, rather than just Google a solution, and after a few false starts I actually managed it!  I even worked in a little bit of error handling, in the form of some silly messages that display if you enter non-sensible sizes.  So I’m feeling pretty proud of myself!


My personalised Machine of Death game card arrived in the mail today, along with a sticker and a really nice card from the creator.  I don’t know whether the game card will ever make it into actual play though – unfortunately, although I really like the concept of the Machine of Death game, in practice it’s a bit clunky to play.  I’ve only played it once, so it may get better with practice (in fact, it almost certainly will, because the biggest problem was that we spent most of the game trying to figure out how the rules worked, so the game never really got flowing), but I don’t know that it’s good enough to be worth the effort of getting past that barrier.  Though I did read somewhere a suggestion of an alternative mode of gameplay that sounded like it would work better, so maybe next time I’m at a games evening I’ll suggest we give it another chance.

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4 Comments

  1. We’re having the opposite – a delighful bit of cooler, drier weather in the midst of our usual late July/August oppressive heat and humidity. A refreshing reminder of cooler days to come in autumn!
    Congratulations on the programming successes! I’m sure you’ll also conquer the paper piecing challenges!

    1. They’re lovely, aren’t they? I get them from this site: http://www.dailydropcap.com/ She’s got a huge number of illustrated letters, each with the html snippet to include it in a post. I don’t always remember to include one, but I try to (especially if I haven’t got any photos in a post), to brighten the page up a bit.

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