Kathy and I had a lot of fun with the videoke thing this evening. We
tried Tragedy among other old songs. It was kinda funny seeing how we
knew a lot of the old songs but few of the new ones. I felt slightly
guilty about not taking Jerome’s call but reason that I rarely get to
bond with my sister like that.

By the way, I’m typing this in dasher. I think Eric will be very glad
to see it tomorrow. He was absent today because of a headache and
missed all his classes. I think I rather missed chatting with him. In
terms of funky research, that is.

I received coke’s card and quickly wrote him two limericks. It was
nice hearing from him. I’ve been remiss in terms of friendship — I
haven’t met Martin in ages!

Status report: Research

Gesture-based input on Linux is still haphazard, and I haven’t found
anything particularly taking advantage of FingerWorks or allowing easy
cross-application scripting. Fake per-application keypresses seem to
be the best bet, but I can’t quite get Xgesture to compile yet – let
me just grab the libXtst-dev package. I think that might be the best
way to approach it. I’ve gotten quite used to rotate-CW to close a
browser window and foursfingers to scroll; now all I need is a
next-tab without closing, and I’ll be all set for funky gesture
navigation. I really just want to blog with a gesture, though. I
wonder how that can be done.

Bringing candies for the midterms was a big hit, with one student
explicitly mentioning this as a Very Good idea. I think some people
think better when they’re eating; I know I like munching on something
while I program. That said, I’m seeing a disturbing number of careless
mistakes. Fortunately this is an irregular course, so at this point I
can help people decide whether they really want to get into computer
science – knowing the exactness and discipline that will be required
of them – but still… I think I should’ve started with the reading
exercises earlier.

Some way or another, we’ll manage.