I'm doing 41 things
...and I’m still looking. Why is it that every job I look at, and every job I get, fails to meet this seemingly simple requirement.
Meitar M.'s Life List
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1. learn to sail
1 entry . 4 cheers2,284 people -
2. find a job that makes me happy
1 entry . 6 cheers551 people -
3. Sky Dive
3 cheers2,660 people -
4. Learn Ruby
4 cheers1,861 people -
5. Start my own business
2 entries . 3 cheers9,324 people -
6. make my mark in web development
1 entry . 4 cheers10 people -
7. always be self-aware
5 cheers4 people -
8. set up my fileserver
1 cheer3 people -
9. set up a free public wi-fi hotspot and access point
1 entry . 2 cheers4 people -
10. get fit
1 entry . 2 cheers3,580 people -
11. learn sign language
5 cheers8,501 people -
12. take better care of my teeth
1 entry . 1 cheer582 people -
13. be good to myself
11 cheers73 people -
14. witness the end of IE
3 cheers664 people -
15. Become number one in Google for my last name
2 entries . 1 cheer43 people -
16. travel to Japan
875 people -
17. organize my finances
335 people -
18. earn more money
1 cheer952 people -
19. learn photoshop
1 cheer1,544 people -
20. master perl
2 cheers20 people -
21. go to the gym regularly
1 cheer832 people -
22. Master PHP
1 cheer319 people -
23. learn to fly a plane
1 cheer1,162 people -
24. take more and better pictures
1 cheer179 people -
25. publish an online comic strip weekly
1 cheer30 people -
26. learn to draw
1 cheer2,401 people -
27. Never stop learning
4 cheers4,078 people -
28. Contribute to an open source software project
1 cheer762 people -
29. never, EVER grow up
6 cheers784 people -
30. Become Financially Independent
2 cheers6,597 people -
31. get a cat
2 entries . 12 cheers903 people -
32. attend the burning man festival
1 entry . 5 cheers271 people -
33. Master MySQL/SQL
4 people -
34. master linux
2 cheers77 people -
35. Have enough money, to not worry about having enough money
3 cheers140 people -
36. learn python
1 cheer839 people -
37. learn to throw knives accurately
1 cheer7 people -
38. Buy a better Squash racquet
1 cheer1 person -
39. Learn Aikido
3 cheers363 people -
40. remain friends with a partner after a breakup
1 entry . 4 cheers5 people -
41. successfully negotiate for a significant raise
1 cheer1 person
Recent entries
As is usually the case, it took some external forces to instigate the motivation to learn AppleScript, but once the motivation was there the language was really easy to grasp. The big rumor about AppleScript is that “it’s easy because it’s exactly like English.” Unfortuantely, that’s not entirely true. AppleScript is just like any other programming language and it has its own set of rules for grammar and syntax which you need to know in order to get a script working. The good news, however, is that once you understand the basics you can start typing out full lines of English-only words instead of punctuation marks like parenthesis and periods and curly braces, and you’ll actually be writing real, working code.
What’s even nicer about AppleScript is that there’s no worry about formatting or style, because the compiler forces extremely stringent restrictions on the syntax of your code the moment you’re done typing. This is good because it means (if you’ll allow me to simplify things for a moment) there aren’t twenty different ways of saying the same thing; once you type what you mean, the compiler changes it just enough to match the standard AppleScript idiom. This is especially helpful when you’re looking through other people’s code.
The single most important resource I’ve been using in my quest to master AppleScript has been Matt Neuburg’s fantastic book, AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition from O’Reilly Publications. Rather than focus on the syntax and grammar up-front (which, honestly, is the easy part of every language) it goes into detail about the technology of AppleScript and how it works in Mac OS X. This is of great benefit to understand while you’re learning the nuts and bolts of the syntax because you’ll be more able to debug your code even if you see errors you don’t understand because you will understand how things are supposed to work.
And of course, once you’ve figured out how to do something in AppleScript, you begin to grasp the nearly infinite ability your Mac has to work for you, instead of the other way around.
Well, after a long enough wait I’ve finally moved ahead and got my official Business Certificate, notorized and filed with the county clerk and everything. Ooh, shiny. It’s sitting on my desk at the moment because I haven’t enough money to open a bank account with it yet, but that’s the next and final step before I can officially conduct business transactions under the name of Maymay Media
