Pirates and Portables

Finished off my fixes to the layout mangler. Now works fine. Spent a huge chunk of time just to get back to where I started. But the design is much cleaner and more flexible. I'm a bit peeved that I didn't think of this technique at the start, but sometimes you have to try to make a design work to find out if it is any good or not. And the new design is almost a work of art.
I have this sort of vision of the future, where computer programmers are recognised as creative artists in the same vein as Leonardo Da Vinci and people will be scouring the hard drive archives of the world for a "genuine Miles listing". They will then marvel at the superb layout, the apposite choice of variable names and the wondrous use of abstraction, interfaces and inheritance which the great programmer has brought to bear on the problem...

I'm not sure that this will happen (oh, alright I am sure that it won't), but I like to think that my code would stand up to such scrutiny if it did...

Also bought number one son his new portable. After trying to purchase an Apple Powerbook from the reconditioned store. Note for future customers: it only opens for a few hours each week and has this strange habit of saying there is nothing there when it opens, and then stuff suddenly appearing (and selling out instantly) somewhat later. Not being that keen on spending hours each week refreshing the browser to catch a machine (or watch as someone else catches it) we eventually bought a PC based Notebook. From a toyshop. If you want a keenly priced, fully featured laptop you should take a serious look in Toys R Us. Their range of Medion systems is just about unbeatable. And the machines themselves are great. This should give some concern to "proper" PC vendors, as things like laptops are now becoming commodities which can be sold by anyone. As for the new machine; I suppose it is just a matter of time before he has Linux running on it - but there's no accounting for taste...

Went to see "The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" tonight. Great fun. Smashing special effects. Johnny Depp was very good. If you want to find out what kind of pirate a permanently sozzled Mick Jagger would make (or if you just want some pure entertainment) I'd advise you to go and see it.