Notation #1: Quarto is now at version 0.8. Prior to their mass genocide at the hands of their dictatorial (and stylishly jackbooted) leadership, the peasants rejoiced.

Possibly the most exquisitely funny part of creating one's own CMS (content management system) is the joy of writing one's own tooltips - a long, tedious, and generally loathsome process that provides endless opportunities to slide in examples of one's highly warped sense of humor.

See also today's attempt to explain to Joe Unknown User on the purposes of a 'blurb':

Why would I use it?
Imagine that you have a very long entry about anteaters, and your site is syndicated in various places that normally use just the first twenty words of each entry. What if the first twenty words of your anteater entry are "While travelling in Mozambique last summer, I happened upon many things of interest, most of which I photographed for my ..." when you'd really rather have people see something like this instead: "This entry contains salacious photos of anteaters."

Yes. Read that again, because the ludicrousness of it didn't sink in the first time: This entry contains salacious photos of anteaters.

Notation #2: Sanity. Lost. Must. Find.

Bah, sanity. Useless piece of crap anyway. Vastly overrated to boot.

(Am beginning to forget how to write in complete sentences.)

Right. So. I'd originally planned to post some blisteringly funny post, drawing together salient points about my life, my current coding project, this site, and how the end result probably meant that I'd be taking a day or two away from posting whilst working on such. The general thesis was to be that while working on Quarto, I tend to focus on it to the exclusion of all else, thereby leaving less (current status: 28% occupied) of my brain available for experiencing, processing, and reformatting interesting occurrences into thoroughly uninteresting (and utterly long-winded) drivel.

Rampant Digression:
Since most of you know me, and have known me for some time...remember how most of you decided that when I was stuck in the hotel for those days at the end of 2000, that the moment I lost my mind was when I said "It's me and Mr. Goodbar dining together again..."? I have this horrible feeling that in a year or two we're going to whisper "This entry contains salacious photos of anteaters" in exactly the same fashion.

Anyhow. Having failed desperately at 'blisteringly funny,' I'm going to set my sights lower and aim for 'moderately chuckleworthy.' Failing that, I'll take another day or two away from posting while I beat on Quarto some more this weekend. When I return—perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Monday, who knows?—here's hoping I'll be full up with the zany humor and commentary you've all rightly learned to fear.

Notation #3: Ditching code tomorrow night and staying up late to watch the Australian Open men's final. Must determine if it is humanly possible to become lamer. Suspect not. Will eat chocolate cake for solace. Have no plans to share.

Have a great weekend. I'll be back with more coding stories soon.

Notation #4 - bonus update: Have decided I hate pinging sites. Silly pings take ages, page hangs, silly domesticat assumes bad network traffic and clicks 'stop' like a dumbass. Manages to submit post twice in process.

On bright side, have managed to become lamer. Process took less than five minutes. Impressive. Hope email list members don't hate me. (Yet.)