C

Fast like lightening

Versatile like clean water

Language of gods

______

10:30 AM, Friday, March 29, 2024

*ring*ring*ring*

It was the third call of my second alarm, set to snooze thrice every ten minutes, which woke me up at 10:30 AM.

Later than I hoped to, but I'd take it. Good thing is that I don't feel any sort of hangover due to last night, although I would be surprised if I did, it was just one bottle of sake after all, and my alcohol tolerance is known to be better.

Getting up from the futon, I picked up the blanket and the sheet, and dusted them off, after which, I folded them neatly. Rolling my futon, with the pillow inside it, I kept it in the corner of my room where the inner wall met the kitchen wall, and put the sheet and the blanket on top of it.

Done clearing up the bed, I went to wash up, and brushed my teeth. I didn't stare at my face for much today, probably just as much as a normal person would.

I was thinking, I was too busy thinking to stare at my face into oblivion. I was thinking about what I needed to do. Although I had time till evening, I also had to go for my part time job. I was starting at 4 PM today.

Once I came out of the bathroom, I went straight to pick up the vacuum cleaner, and started cleaning up my kitchen, my 4 and 1/2 tatami room, and the genkan where most of the dust would be. After cleaning up, I went to take a shower. I was motivated today. There was a lot of work to do, things to accomplish.

___

Getting out of the bath, I went to my closet and pulled out some casual clothes fitting for early summers, and put them on. They would also work for later when I have to go for my part time job, I'll just put on the windbreaker I was wearing yesterday.

Since I wanted to work today, there would be no point in spending much time cooking. Opening my fridge, I took out 4 eggs, broke them in a bowl, stirred them until somewhat homogeneous, and dropped them on a medium hot pan.

While the eggs' bottom was solidifying, I took two big slices of bread, and dropped them on top of the eggs. A minute later, when I was certain that the bottom had solidified enough, I used a spatula to lift the eggs and wrap them around the slices of bread, then flipped one eggs covered bread slice on top of the other, making a hybrid of french toast and egg sandwich.

I did not season any of them.

I once saw a man who talked about how he didn't season his steak, but his cutting board. Indeed, that enigma was this american mad-lad known as Adam Ragusea. Taking inspiration, I started a new practice, instead of seasoning my food, I would season my plate. Solid foods like omelettes at least.

I carefully sprinkled salt, and black pepper all over my plate before gently dropping my french-toast-cum-egg-sandwich on it. Taking a knife and a fork alongside my food, I went to my desk, and left it there.

I forgot to bring a drink.

Walking back into the kitchen, I picked up a can of Oolong tea I already had.

There was a reason I was not brewing coffee today.

I wanted to fix my sleep schedule. If I were to have coffee now, it would take at least 12 hours to get the caffeine out of my body, and that would make it hard for me to sleep early. I wanted to sleep before 12 AM so that I could wake up earlier the next day. Although I did not have a reason to wake up early tomorrow, I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was doing by running a trial on Saturday and Sunday for this.

Although not as effective as coffee, the little amount of caffeine in the Oolong tea will keep me off from a complete withdrawal.

I sat on my table, and opened YouTube strictly for the time I was going to spend eating.

I typed "Interview with a senior C dev" in the search bar, and opened the second video I got, of ThePrimeagen watching the Original video by "Programmers Are Also Human".

Indeed, a humorous masterpiece, that video.

I gradually finished my breakfast, taking occasional sips of the tea, as the video ran through its length. A daily dose of good dopamine, and it even made me remember why I loved C despite all its shortcomings and pitfalls. C++ not so much though, it was a language meant to torture people with brains. I might start language wars by saying this, but I would write Rust any day over C++.

Indeed. Rust was awesome.

Now that I've ignited the flames of a new drama, it was time for me to turn off YouTube, and take my dishes to the kitchen. Dropping them in the sink, and rinsing them with water, I washed my hands and cleaned my face.

I was done with everything now, time to finally get to work.

___

So, there was a slight change of plans. I was not going to create a CLI application anymore. Instead, I would be writing a TUI application. It would be more interactive and just easier to work with.

Since I already had a To-Do list application that I wrote a few months ago in an attempt make myself more productive, I could take most of the layout code from it.

I would be using the Ncurses library to create the layout, since it's a relatively low level abstraction over standard C code. Now, a lot of people might wonder why I would do these toy projects in C instead of something easier, like Javascript, or Python, but I just don't like interpreted languages much. Unless it's Lua, Lua is cute, Lua is good, and it makes my life easier when I have to make changes to my Neovim configuration.

Anyway, so the plan was simple, create a two panels on the terminal that have a horizontal division, so the top one would have the tasks I needed to do, and the bottom one would have the tasks I have completed, and the I points I get from them.

The design is simple, but it would be effective. I could then output the text in the two panels into two different text files in a directory, and then give Subaru the remote access to that directory via SSH.

Glorious SSH.

___

After about two hours of copy pasting, rewriting, and refactoring my C code from the older project, I was finally done making this thing.

I added a new task — Get this semester's subjects' notes from Subaru — and hit the 'Enter' key. I assigned the task 10 points.

This was just for the sake of an example though, hence I also gave it a low amount of points. The points I assign would be arbitrary, depending on how long the task might take, and how much effort I might need to put in to get it done, but nevertheless, I will have to be responsible with them. Another reason why I wanted to give Subaru access to this thing, so that when he could, he would be able to make sure I wasn't slacking off, or giving easy tasks too many points.

I added two more tasks in the list after this, one to get through my day's shift at the cafe, assigning it 100 points, and the second being making plans for how I was going to get through the remaining of my semester, draw out a strategy to study for the papers I had chosen in the remaining short time, and somehow pass them.

I was still not on board with the idea of going on the job hunt though. I wanted to go another direction. I wanted to make money on my own, not by employment, I wanted to create something that people would directly buy from me, instead of writing software for a huge corporation.

I looked at the time on my monitor's screen.. it was close to 2 PM already.

Aaaahh.

I stretched my body and yawned. Although I felt a little drowsy, nothing another can of tea wouldn't fix. I had finished the original one by the time I was half an hour into working on this little piece of software.

Taking the can, I threw it into the trash bin I had, the one meant for recyclable trash. I had to take them out too, they were filling up.

First thing, I went to the washroom to empty my bladder off the filtered fluids, and wash my face with some water so I didn't feel sleepy.

After washing up, I went to the kitchen and pulled out another can of Oolong tea. I like Oolong tea.

Leaving it on my desk, I went back into the kitchen. I was feeling a strange burst of motivation for some reason, and decided to wash the dishes that instant. Lathering up the plate, the fork, and the knife, one by one, I rinsed them all and pat dried them with a towel. I looked around for a bit and..

..ah, I'd missed the pan and the spatula. Thankfully, the pan was nonstick, so there was no egg stuck to it, just tiny bits of oil remained. Picking them off one by one, I cleaned it all up, and left the utensils to dry. After this, I went to the trash cans and tied the top of both the bags in them, one for organic trash, and the other meant for inorganic, recyclable trash. Taking them outside my door, I came back in, leaving the door ajar for a few moments. I took out two new trash bags, and put each in those trash cans.

Feeling satisfied, I went outside, closed my door, and took the bags of trash two streets down with me, where a trash station sort of thing was placed. Landfill people come and pick up trash from here every morning and evening. Maybe I should make it a habit to take out trash every morning. I could even start a workout routine, a short jog and trash dump at the same time.

Mulling over the idea, I threw each bag in the respective trash container, once again, one meant for recyclable, and the other for biodegradable materials.

Once done, I tracked my steps back to my place. The wind was less of a lion today, and more of a lamb. It wasn't sunny today, which along with gentle winds and low temperature of the early spring, made for a perfect picnic weather. If only it was a Saturday today, a lot of people would be going out.

Reaching back, I washed my hands, picked up the can of tea, and sat down on the floor, with my back against my room's inner wall. I opened the can, and it made the noise of the malleable tin cracking from itself. I took a big sip of the cold tea, and thought about what I would do now, trying to figure out the exact details of the ordeals I may have to commit.

There was a certain idea that had taken place in the back of my head for years. Indeed, I was a fellow who had little interaction with women outside of educational setting, but I did not dislike them. In fact, I was quite amicable with the idea of interacting with other people of the same species that came with a different sex. But more than that, I was fond of fictional characters, female fictional characters from some of our favourite media.

The idea in my head was, what if? What if I gave this world a setting in which they could immerse themselves, literally, and design a person of their choice, their liking, from the looks to personality, and life basics, and give them backstories, memories, and social history. What if I could give this world a choice to create their own favourite person in a virtual world.

Of course, my plans were not limited to just the virtual world, they went beyond just that, but that conversation is for another day. But for what I had in mind, I knew the world was at a stage where it could be made true, it could be made to exist, to take form, and live.

It won't be exist in the physical world, but it didn't need to. After all, what gave it meaning would be the feelings of the person who created it. Indeed, I wanted to do this in my life.

*ring*ring*

Alumina played as I looked at the screen of my phone. It was Subaru.

I looked at the time, it was 2:50 PM.

______

Glossary

1. 4 1/2 Tatami room - A rooms who's floor is made of four and a half tatami mats, arranged in any order that is a quadrilateral.

2. Genkan - Japanese word for the place between a house's door, and the main area, where slippers and shoes are removed. Usually step below the rest of the house.

3. C - A 'high level' programming language meant to write systems software like operating systems, back-end servers, browsers, etc.

4. ThePrimeagen - A programming Youtuber.

5. C++ - Another programming language, sometimes considered an extension of C.

6. Rust - A modern systems programming language first released in 2015 with memory safety in mind, meant to be a safer alternative to C/C++.

7. Javascript - A higher level interpreted language that is less verbose to write code in. Is at the heart of all web development. Runs on top of C++.

8. Python - Another higher level interpreted language that is less verbose to write code in. Is at the heart of all AI and Machine Learning ecosystem. Runs on top of C, but has other popular runtimes too.

9. Lua - Same as Python, but it is know to be faster in Python. Most used along side Love2D, a 2D game engine.

10. Neovim - A high performance, freedom and productivity oriented code editor that lets you configure it however you want. Uses Lua for it's configuration.

11. TUI - Terminal User Interface, halfway to a GUI, but you have to generally use keyboard to navigate through. Runs on a terminal window.

12. Alumina - First ending song of the anime Death Note.