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web programming is possible without access to the internet
Friday, March 20 2009
Downtime was particularly hard to come by for me today. It seemed like every twitching moment of my day there was somebody wanting me to do something. I spent some hours in Eastern Correctional facility setting up computers in the new computer lab. A had a handful of student-inmates helping me unpack and set up the computers, which made it all go quickly. The only snag was the gate clearance, to which I'd failed to add ten surge-protecting powerstrips, and the unusually bitchy guard running the checkpoint wouldn't let them in (though such things are normally considered benign). But back in the school part of the prison, authorities were less repressive and loaned me the powerstrips I needed until my next visit. I should mention an interesting difference between protocols at Eastern and Woodbourne. Though the former is maximum-security, I'm usually left alone with the inmates when I'm doing what I need to do. In Woodbourne, which is medium-security, this never happens; I'm always assigned a guard who spends his time twiddling his thumbs for the hours it takes me to do what I need to do.
I'd forgotten to mention I'd gone to Eastern on Tuesday (the 17th) on a mostly wasted trip, but had taken the opportunity to show one of the student-inmates that web programming is possible without access to the internet. I'd used a text editor to craft a small Javascript program to draw a sine curve of bars printed out in a web browser window by one for loop nested within another.
This particular student had said something about wanting to learn how to program C++, and I thought the highly-forgiving Javascript environment might be the best place for him to start. This same student was helping me with the computers today, and I didn't ask him about his progress with Javascript programming.
Back at the house the guy I work with had been leaving me hysterical messages about the state of our latest project, which is due on Monday. I'd stayed up late last night working on it, so it was conceivable I'd totally screwed it up. More likely, though, something very small was wrong with it that it wouldn't be difficult to fix. Still, I just wish the guy would learn from his experience with me; I procrastinate, I dilly-dally, but in the end I get shit done on time. Our project was practically done, and he was acting like I'd barely started.
Once that fire had been put out, I went down to the greenhouse and mixed up eighty pounds of concrete, which I proceeded to glurp into several voids beneath the walls where my bedrock-floor-removing operations had advanced a bit too far.
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