Still playing with GitHub

I finished the Git Immersion tutorial that I started yesterday. I really enjoyed the way that the material was presented, and though I was a little lost near the end (mostly in how the commands exactly worked, not the concepts) I thought that it was a good introduction to how to work with version control software.

I only catastrophically destroyed my repo once (more like needed to redo five minutes of work), and I figured out exactly what not to do when I'm managing my own work. (For future reference: hard resetting to the beginning of the tutorial is not a recommended course of action.)

Backups: always a good idea.

From this I've decided that my next project is going to be putting together some of my basic fasta file scripts into a toolkit, which will give me the opportunity to both clean out my junk drawer of code and also put some of my newly found version control knowledge to use.

Most of the rest of the day will be spent tinkering with this before I have to go home. School starts next week and I want to enjoy the most of what time I've left. I'm pretty sure that will mostly be playing Dota2 and writing, but we'll see what that brings!

Post-Break Clean Up

Spent most of work today learning how to use git from a couple of different sites while my tree building software ran. I think I'm going to try and get a repo set up on GitHub that contains some of the tools I've developed so I can easily work on them and transfer them to new computers.
(I'm using this tutorial here, and it seems pretty good for a crash course.)

Most of what I have currently is just pipeline Bash scripts or really specific data manipulation python code. It'll be a good exercise to go through and empty out my junk drawer and see what actually useful code I have lying around. I know most of it is just adaptors and widgets, but maybe there'll be something interesting I can dust off and clean up.

I've learned so much in the past year, I'm just a little worried to look back on my code and see how awful it was/is. It'll be good to review it and move forward I think. More like mid-winter cleaning than spring cleaning, but I think that's probably for the best to get it out of the way before classes start to get too intense.

Probably going to spend the rest of the day catching up on reading literature for my thesis with the all important coffee break at 4. (Not that I haven't had enough coffee today... probably should have made a half pot instead.)

Thoughts on my Penultimate Semester

• Why are all my important classes this semester?
  
• Dear god, it takes how long for the busses to get to this new place?
  
• I'm going to be really good about going to class, despite the busses.
  
• Everyone in my program is in all my classes, and my boss teaches half of them. I really can't slack off.
  
• Oh god. What if I slack off?
  
• I know for a fact I am going to spend so much time pretending to study and just watching funny cat videos.
  
• I should find some way of blocking cat videos on my laptop.
  
• Cat videos would be so much better to watch on my desktop anyway.
  
• Maybe I should set up a program for collecting cat videos on my desktop, that way I'm not tempted to watch them during class.
  
• Wait. Was I really thinking about watching cat videos in class?
  
• Maybe if I show my boss cat videos every morning before class, I won't be tempted to watch them in class.
  
• Then if I do watch cat videos in class, it would be alright.
  
• I can't watch cat videos during class.
  
• These classes are important. It doesn't matter if my boss is alright with it, she only teaches half my classes.
  
• I could totally just stop watching cat videos for the semester.
  
• Seriously just cold turkey. None what so ever.
  
• That sounds stressful. I'm going to watch a cat video real quick.

• I think this semester is going to go swimmingly.
  

(Replace cat videos with facebook, twitter, tumblr, books, music, fencing, board games, writing, blogging, eating, sleeping, working out, and/or cat videos.)

Kittens and Dinosaurs

I have no content for you this week. Here are pictures of cool kittens and dinosaurs.

Locked into a struggle of life and death: the loser will undoubtedly starve.

Play is extremely important for developing spacial awareness and social skills.

Simply adorable.

A vicious hunter eyes it's unsuspecting prey.

A medium-sized, heavily built, ground-dwelling, quadrupedal herbivore that can grow up to an estimated 16.4 ft long. 

Cutest little orange fluff ball.

Things You Should Read

Mostly horror, but the good kind. Like the monster in my closet that I feed stuffed animals to.
(It also eats house centipedes.)

Apothecia -- Taz Muir and Shelby Cragg

• Free Downloads of 'Speculative Fiction 2012' and '13 today as listed on Reddit. A combination of excellent articles and blog posts about writing and reading better.
  (Profits typically go to Room to Read, so if you like these collections you should send money that way. Thanks Angus!)
• The Shirley Jackson Award-winning short story, 57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides, by the most excellent Sam J. Miller.A truly wonderful horror story that speaks for itself.
  (Which was just awarded this past weekend.)
• The up-and-coming horror comic Apothecia by the exceedingly talented duo Taz Muir and Shelby Cragg.
  Lots of weird biology, so that's just A+ in my books.
  (Things are really starting to pick up and move. I'm very excited.)
• Jeff VanderMeer's Story Bundle which has such range that all I can tell you is to go pick these bad boys up and take 'em on a date to your personal reading nook.
  (Seriously, if you like weird fiction: this is your cup of tea.)

Games, Prize Pools, and High School Werewolves

--But mostly the first. Here are the video games and tabletops I've been playing around with since I've gotten my desktop back up and running:

• Monsterhearts
  This table top is all about teenagers who are monsters. But seriously like supernatural monsters instead of the traditional rigamarole of just social incompetence. Play about the same as Twilight: The Movie: The Game except fully aware and embracing all the absolutely broken, destructive, confusing, and manipulative behaviours that come with it. Brilliant, beautiful, and fun.
  
• Diablo 2 and Diablo 3
  After waiting to play the successor to my childhood favorite "Kill the Big Evil Dude: Save the World", I've felt like I've been in a bad relationship. I played the second, mostly to try and alleviate any nostalgia I might have. But even now I feel that with slowly aging graphics and often blatant clique usage, it is the better game narrative wise, and I think it has a lot to do with tone.
  The 2nd feels like you are barely succeeding. The hero is not coming in to save the day--they are two steps behind and trying desperately to perform damage control.
  The 3rd is all about the chosen hero having witty banter with the lords of hell and then defeating them even as the armies of hell bear down upon them.
  With a second expansion slated for D3, I can see a glistening path that would make me finally happy with it's narrative direction. I'll hold my breath to see if they manage to salvage it.
  
• Transistor
  A beautiful, tactical, and complex game in a similar style as SuperGiant's first major success, Bastion. Cyberpunk with heavy art deco influences, it follows the escape/revenge of Red, a singer who has lost her voice, with a giant talking computer-sword as they uncover the plots of a mysterious organization that created it.
  Transistor does not want to give up its narrative easily. The plotline is broken into tiny bits and hidden within both the world and also combat itself, as using certain abilities unlocks longer biographies of the city's residents. That combined with the narrator, who is an absolute treat, makes the game highly replayable. I'm going to be sinking a lot more time into this game in the near future.
  
• DOTA 2
  A free-to-play 5v5 isometric wizard'em up produced by Valve. A complex and difficult game which rewards teamwork and communication with a community that often ignores both of these. An exceedingly fun game to play with friends, it is about to start the International 4 (TI4), its 4th international tournament with a staggering prize pool of Ten Million Dollars. (Well, $10,507,475 to be exact.) This is not only the highest monetary prize in all of e-sports, but it is more than all the previous DOTA prize pools combined. This is also impressive as it also held the highest prize pool at $2.8mil from TI3 last year.
  So, if you are interested in witnessing the most heated e-sports event in the world, you can grab a stream or watch from the in-game client as the games start today.

Things I Hate...

... about myself which are unhealthy and I should learn to deal with better.

• Deadlines and procrastination. (This was meant to be posted Monday.)
  
• Obsessing over my own faults. (Hence writing this list.)
  
• Inability to appreciate my own successes. (Which seems quite a martyrish thing to say.)
  
• Simultaneous need for isolation and interaction. (An exceedingly human quality.)
  
• Assumptions that guile and previous experience trump practice. (Always.)
  
• Assumptions that literally everyone else is more experienced than myself. (Not always a fault.)
  
• My body image.  (I really don't

Screw that. I'm twenty three and sick of dealing with this insecurity.

I'm going to go write about robots and eat ice cream and drink more coffee. Maybe a good book. Transistor is actually really lovely and I really dig the aesthetic. Not good for my sleep schedule, but I'm alright with that. Maybe I'll write Transistor fan fiction. That sounds like a good plan. Yes. 

Also, contribute to my Clarion Write-a-Thon drive and get awful haikus (one per dollar). 

My current haiku completion stats are sitting at a solid 20/40 so those will get done and sent out before week's end.

This will be all green by the end of the week without your help.
FIGHT THE GREEN MENACE! DONATE TODAY!