<argh>a=b?1:-1; is JUST AS READABLE as if(b)a=1;else a=-1;. It's not "clever code." It's an operator EVERY USER OF C SHOULD BE ABLE TO READ.</argh>

And yes, I realize that ?: is an excellent tool for making code unreadable, especially if you nest them. But do I really need 6 lines (have to use braces for all if/else statements) to make this "readable"?

Helpful reminder: Blogging is public; blogging is publication. (via How Appealing.)

Caillech is now a canine good citizen! Yay! Also, she's adorable. (More photos from that set.) Noelle and Caillech both worked really hard to manage that, and I'm so proud of them.

In absolutely unrelated news, I get 18mpg when driving like an asshole, and 27mpg when driving to maximize gas efficiency. Since my normal gas usage is 23mpg, I conclude that I am 48% asshole.

Oddly, in the RAV4, I was never able to discern a difference in gas consumption based on my driving style.

This comment got me thinking. Apparently, in Troy, Helen is "a passive nonentity." Is it because the plot dictates that she's attractive, and being headstrong would make her less attractive? It seems like, in general, if a woman is going to be romantically attractive in a movie, she can't kick ass 100%. Either she's going to be just sort of passive, or she's going to have some sort of endearing flaw that can only be overcome with the help of her love interest.

I don't know... Maybe I'm not really explaining what I'm thinking very well, and maybe it's just because most of the movies I watch are action movies, and maybe I just really need to put more thought into this. What I wonder, though, is if it really is the case that the "target demographic" really doesn't find themselves attracted to a woman unless they know she'd suffer if he weren't around, or if it's just that the whole "woman gets in over her head, man comes along to save her" scene is a deeply ingrained cliche and nobody knows how to make a movie without it. I know I always find myself dutifully cooing along when the darling bird breaks her wing, but I'm much more enthralled when the love interest actually stays dangerous through the whole film.

Argh. So, grades are being posted. The first three days, the database was down, so grades were only being posted at the school. We could still call the "grades hotline" to find out what classes grades had been posted for. None of my classes posted in the first three days.

Today, we get an email saying that the database is up, and grades will begin posting online. So I start spastically refreshing my grades page. At 3:30, I refresh, and it shows I have an A in Property. I do a little dance, feel some intense relief (Of the three finals, that's the one I thought I bombed the worst.), tell some people... And half an hour later, I refresh again to see if anything else has posted.

My grade from Property has disappeared. Two hours later, it still hasn't reappearred. I'm assuming at this point that it was miskeyed, and subsequently deleted. So much for that feeling of relief.

Argh.

Observations from last night:

If I incur as much XP debt as I gained experience, I may as well not have played at all.

I really wish City of Heroes supported the Radeon 7500 series, since that's what's on my laptop, and none of my desktops are working right now.

Disney's "A Wrinkle in Time" was not as awful as I expected. I knew they were going to have to eliminate some of the focus of the book, and I think they did a fairly good job of turning the story into a generic kid's movie. I can't explain why someone who respected the book would want to do that, though. Also, the CGI was just awful.

So, yesterday, I posted an image (<a href...>) to my livejournal. Today I ran my server logs, just to see how many people had clicked through. Here are the hits from "last 30 lj images" type pages:
5: http://www.untimelydeath.com/lj/lj_last_image.html
3: http://www.soosed.com/lj/
3: http://images.google.ch/imgres
2: http://www.killthelights.com/lj.php
2: http://premshree.resource-locator.com/cgi-bin/ljimages.cgi
1: http://ga2so.com/lj.php
1: http://www.cyberworld.ru/lj/ljimage.php
1: http://www.echo23.com/ljimages.php
1: http://www.dreamsbroken.com/rlj.php
1: http://bendystraw.com/lji/index.php
So if you were wondering, there it is - 20 hits for a picture posted at 5pm CDT. It's tempting to do some more tests on this thing. Indeed, that's what I'm going to do.

Someone let me know if someone else is already doing this?

I'm sure someone has already done a much better job of this than I did, but here it is.

During my breaks from studying, I've been playing a little City of Heroes. Actually, playing probably isn't the best word - I've spent more time creating characters than I have playing.

I started to write up some thoughts, but it ended up sounding like an advertisment for their character creation system. In short, the character creation is awesome, the game itself is alright. It's exactly what I want in an MMORPG right now; something where you can fire it up, beat up some thugs, and shut it right back down.

Now, back to Property.

Oh - yeah. And I've only seen three characters so far that were total ripoffs of major DC/Marvel properties. I C E M A N was the worst - it looked like an ordinary guy in a white bodysuit. The Tickman was stupid, but at least they did an alright job with the costume. And I haven't gotten a close enough look at Ms. Marvel to see if it's just the name that's a ripoff. (Uh... I'm an idiot. The Tick is not DC/Marvel. I know this, really, I do.)