computing outdoors
Well, I went and bought the MacBook. I’m still getting it set up how I want it, but I have transferred all my old email across and got Safari bookmarks & Address Book synchronising nicely between my 2 Macs. I am now sitting in the garden, have sent the emails I wrote whilst on the train to Cambridge yesterday, and finished my first nontrivial bash script (which renders and saves manpages as PDFs, plus an md5 hash so that if the manpage is updated (for whatever reason) the PDF will be re-generated. OK, so an experienced shell-scripter would probably call that trivial, but it’s not immediately obvious what conditions have to be put in [[ ]] and that sort of thing, and the fact that the manpage says $(cmd) is recommended over `cmd` but I don’t know if there’s a difference, or what difference it makes when a command is run in a subshell, or… well, you get the picture.
Had a lovely time in Cambridge; went up yesterday afternoon, saw friend#1, then met CULES(friends#2-n) on Jesus Green, then went to friend#2′s house with CULES, had BBQ and laughed at people in cold paddling pool, then went to see X-Men III (entertaining). This morning I had a very pleasant wander around town before having breakfast in Café Carrington, then sat on the Paddock in college for a while and friend#n+1 came to chat. Finally had lunch with friend#n+2 and her mum. So, lots of people seen, lots of sunshine enjoyed – a success!
N.B. friends are numbered in the order in which they appear, rather than by importance!