I sat down at my laptop to write this post and when I started typing I saw nothing. Well, almost nothing. There was an almost imperceptible motion of something across the screen as I typed, but I certainly wasn't able to resolve it into letters. I've had this problem before. I recently started using a dark system theme on this computer, which features light gray text on black backgrounds. This works great until I get online and access websites that can choose to specify their own colors. Sometimes they make sure to say they want black text. Awesome. But that means I fall back on my default black background and can't see what I type. Other times (like here) they specify white backgrounds. Sweet. But my default light gray text doesn't show up very well.
It turns out this has been a known issue for over a year, but has yet to be fixed.
And as I type that, I follow my own link to get a little more familiar with it (because I'm coming back to it later--you might want to at least queue it up in another tab if you haven't looked at it yet). And what do I discover but a fix? A fix that, unlike other fixes I've seen for this, works for me! And uses files that actually exist on my machine! Good deal. I shall continue typing this back in my wonderfully gothish theme and not leaning in until I'm two inches away from the screen, only to find I still have to highlight what I just typed to confirm it's actually there. Isn't contrast wonderful?
Now, still have that tab open? Launchpad, the site hosting the bug report, is also hosting 628 lines of veritable C++ written by none other than yours truly. That's right, this week I published open source code for the first time in my life (ok, I guess you didn't really need the other tab for that). It feels good to finally have something to show for my work, and it feels crazy to think that this could some day be a small part of some incredibly revolutionary technology. Even better, this is exactly what I've been learning to do in school and could be what I do for the rest of my life.
I've been tossing around the idea of devoting my next three decades (or however long it takes) to helping create the world's first artificial general intelligence. If I do I have a lot of learning to do before I can make really serious contributions, and even then I will only be playing a small part. But if I do, you can, right now, see the first 628 lines of my life's work. And if I do, I would be taking part in the most significant human advancement ever. How incredible is that?
For that to happen, though, I should probably at least complete the Summer of Code in good standing. And part of that is completing weekly progress reports, which I have not done yet. I suppose I should get on that...
This week's song: I'm Still Here by Vertical Horizon
Pardon the Smallville; It had the best audio of the videos I found.
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