...is brutal. I was woken up this morning at 7.13 and as I came through the door at work, it was 7.57. Three and a half hours into it, after coffee, I'm still suffering. And I miss music, I usually have it with me but today I don't so there's nothing to distract myself with from falling asleep. :(

Have you ever tried printing a web page? How did it turn out? In most cases crap, right? And you've noticed that rarely do pages that aren't made for printing actually turn out okay, haven't you? Exactly, that's why most publications offer two versions of every story, one for online, another for printing. But what if you need to print a bunch of pages that weren't made for it? And what if you need the target format to be pdf? I don't recall who said it originally but the answer is : you be fucked.

First of all, let's examine the printing capabilities of the popular browsers.

• Firefox: fonts are molested, formatting is abused, no f. way
• Mozilla: slightly different result but same principles apply
• Konqueror: has the best printing capabilities since it uses the KDE print subsystem but the fonts are even more off than in Gecko browsers and don't get me started on how it handles images with some medieval scaling rules
• Opera: looks halfway presentable but javascript comes in your way and it still looks nothing like the original with forms and tables on the page

So while the first 3 all render very well on screen, they do a total stinker of rendering the print version. I don't know why it is so hard. Opera is the only halfway acceptable choice, but it screws up forms big time and has lots of other "interesting" quirks.

So I decide on Opera, I choose A4 for paper format but what do you know, it still comes out in f. US Letter format. So I have to print with Opera, convert the ps to pdf, then open in kpdf and print from there into A4. For every friggin screenshot. Of course, since there is a conversion between letter and A4, some degree of scaling is being done and the images look crap. So while all my other reports look excellent, the screenshots look like they were made by a 4-year-old.

Examine the result yourself. Compare this, a report written in lyx and compiled into pdf, to this, a collection of screenshots printed through opera-kpdf. Use Adobe Acrobat Reader and have fun zooming.

So much work has gone into browser engines, we have several of them used by the big boys and web rendering is generally excellent these days. So why is it so fucking hard to print a web page?????????????????

Oh yeah and I spent 6 bloody hours on getting this pathetic end result. :wallbang:

So I have this daily routine going now. At some point during the day, usually multiple times, I open the balcony door to get some air in my room. Sooner or later, there is this wasp which flies in and spends the rest of the day interminably buzzing at the window, looking out from inside, like it's trying to fly out. After observing and concluding that it's not gonna stop, I get sick of the buzzing and I bat it out on the balcony. That usually knocks it out cold but it's back the next day. I'm getting bored with it so if it comes around today, I might just swing the bat a tiny bit more, so it lands in the neighbor's yard.

Have you heard people say this? It comes up in arguments from time to time, as a statement meant to galvanize the argument for one side. "They had the guy's confession on tape AND they had his finger prints all over the apartment. YOU do the math". No, YOU do the math. Math is hard and it takes a lot of work, it's not fun either. Why should I do your math, do it yourself ffs!

There are these people who cope well with sickness. So well that you can't really tell they're sick unless they tell you and as far as you can see, it doesn't set them back at all. They are caring, thoughtful and personable.

I am not one of those people. When I get sick (not talking serious illness here, just your regular cold or flu), I'm in no condition to do anything. I feel sorry for myself, I don't want to talk (not because of bad mood, just because talking takes effort), I'm down, unable to communicate properly cause my mood is tainted and not personable in the least.

The last few weeks I've been working 10 hour days. I have a big project at school and it counts for 60% of my overall grade this term. I'm a little late and so it has been long days in the run-in period. The work I like and that's not a problem. The long hours are a bit tiring but I can handle them. But last Thursday I woke up with pain in my shoulder. So much that walking hurt. Out of the blue, never had it before. So that day I wasn't very productive, Friday it was much better. But although I can still feel my shoulder, over the weekend it has coupled with a nasty cold. Up until this morning my throat hurt but I didn't have a runny nose. Now I do have that too, it's only gotten worse today. Today I left the house at 9.30, stayed home 2 hours for dinner and came back home at 10. But the important work that couldn't wait I got done the past two days, I might see the doctor to get a note tomorrow and apply for an extension on my project. If I lose anymore days I'll be in trouble cause I really can't spare it.

I must have consumed obscene amounts of vitamin c but it's not helping, just stalling a bit.