Sunday, November 11, 2001
|7:39 PM| What defines me as a human, or more to the point, as a geek? What particular point of the entire range of technological fronts most holds my interest? It's time for me to figure this out, because all my pontificating and posturing about going back to school or becoming a better human doesn't mean squat if I can't figure out what I want from my education. I never wanted to settle on one field, because they all interest me to a certain extent. I think I have found one particular field that can grab my attention and is varied enough so I can always get distracted by something within my field. It may sound silly, but I'm going to learn as much as I can about robotics. Not just autonomous mechanical beings, but also more basic but useful applications like mechanical limbs, improved construction processes, better movement studies. To group robotics into a single field of study is an act of hubris and lunacy, since if you get right down to it just about every field of technology gets involved. I could learn about machine shop code, alloy construction, the nitty gritty of actually building something to replace natural organisms. I know there is no artificial limb out there that anyone would want in place of a fully functional, "i was born with it" arm. The control of such things is a programming language field in an of itself. How the heck can you have a device the size of my pinkie nail that contains no moving parts yet can decide what a device should do if it detects light but no sound? It's mind blowing. I have to focus, I can't dance around each field. I have to find what I'm suited for and pursue it. It's a real "don't look back, just plunge forward" situation. If I do this, when I do this, I abandon anything else I was working on. I can't second guess myself and all other actions must be in the same vein. I may be programming a game for a man in 1 month, but I'm doing that for further funding, I'm not a game programmer.

Obviously, I can't just decide on this from one session of thinking about it while I am shaving and getting dressed. I'm going to sleep on it, spend the week mulling it over and seeing what my options are. If it looks like I will starve to death if I pursue this, I'll have to figure out if it it's worth it. I'm also very fickly by nature, can I be sure I will feel this pumped in the morning? And if not, then why? I've been obsessed by things for years in the past, what is another several decades?

Just writing this makes it seem silly. "What does he do?" "Oh, he builds robots". But, who gives a damn about what other people say if I'm doing something meaningful that also happens to pay the bills? I can't second guess myself because other people don't agree with it.
Anyway, I have to go do my chores. I can't sit around thinking what I'm going to be doing in the glorious future if I can't get what I should be doing accomplished right now.

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We need one created for the years, and then the months. The months are the /////tricky ones, since they need their ID to increase more than the years, but since the functions keep referencing ///// the same name system, we have to be careful not to make the years close up when we click on a month. ///Set some Variables $YearMenuID = 1; /////What ID the preceding year link controls. Needs to be same for all the months under a given year. $MonthMenuID= 1; ////What ID the preceding month link controls. Needs to be the same for all the weeks under a given ////Month but not the same as any year, etc. $LastYearUsed = 0; $LastMonthUsed = 0; echo '

'; /////That should be the "Year" div. All the years should be in this one DIV. ///Start the main loop. foreach ($myDateArray as $key => $value) { ////Pulling the year/date. $month = ExtractMonth($value); $year = ExtractYear($value); $YearMenuID = $year; $MonthMenuID = $month; $PrettyMonth = $MyDateArray[$month]; ////Is this a new year? If ($year != $LastYearUsed) ///Then we need to put the year down. No DIV created quite yet. { ///First off, we need to close the preceding year's DIV. Twice if it ain't 2001 if ($year != 2001) { echo '

'; } echo '

$myDateArray[$key]

_HTML2_; ///That creates a DIV for the year (month based links) then the month (week based links). ////Then the first weekly link. ///That should have made a link to the weekly archive file. ///As well as creating the first month link, which is in its own DIV, } Else { ///Okay, it's not a new year. So, we need to check if it's a new month. If($month != $LastMonthUsed) { //So it's a new month. That means we need to put down a link for the month to control the div //that contains the weekly links. //First, though, we need to close up the previous month echo '

$myDateArray[$key]

_HTML3_; } Else /////////So it's not a new month, then we just need to put down the weekly link. { echo '

' . $myDateArray[$key] . '

'; } } $LastMonthUsed = $month; $LastYearUsed = $year; } ECHO '