Chad Weider

Wow, today the midwest is getting pounded by a heck of a [snow storm](http://www.crh.noaa.gov/showsigwx.php?warnzone=ILZ045&warncounty=ILC019&firewxzone=ILZ045&local_place1=Urbana&product1=Blizzard+Warning) which, surprisingly enough, has resulted in the rare [cancellation](http://www.uiuc.edu/resources/announcement1.html) of the day’s classes here at the [U of I](http://www.uiuc.edu/).

Needless to say, I’m quite excited by the possibilities that a free day (and accompanying delay in coursework) offers.

By the end of this day, I hope to write my poor and neglected blog once more and am resolved to make further progress on the actively developing of [LaserLine 2.0](http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/projects/LaserLine).

Update: According to the [Daily Illini](http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/13/News/University.Cancels.All.Classes.Due.To.Weather.Conditions-2715763.shtml), this last happened in [1979](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979). (thanks [Joey](http://www.joeyhagedorn.com/))
Update: I [now](http://www.uiuc.edu/resources/announcement3.html) have wednesday off as well, this is indeed unheard of.


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Today is September 13th, the 256th day of the year. According to the Wikipedia the 2^8th day of the year is Programmer’s Day.

Have a wonderful Programmer’s Day!

As I had mentioned [earlier](/2006/07/09/california/), since finishing up at school and getting settled here in California, I’ve been keeping busy with several undertakings of my own design. One such activity was getting further work done on my [miscellaneous projects](/projects/misc/). Nothing too significant, mostly just house-keeping and some polishing-up, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be exciting!

CTBadge: Some minor tweaks, now the badges generated are *very* nearly identical. First change was to the character alignment, it turns out in fact that Apple aligns their text without the help of NSParagraphStyle. The second change(s) were to the badge gradient, now the colors are darker, and the gradient’s progressions and angles match their corresponding “official” badge (yes, there are different angles for different badges).

CTGradient: Knocked a few items off of my [list](/2006/01/15/gradients-in-cocoa/). The big addition is added support for beautiful chromatic blends! (I’m excited, aren’t you?). In order to celebrate I also hacked out a delightful new icon which I should be adding (sooner or later) to my icon [collection](/projects/icons/).

Aside from that I threw in some new gradient styles (Sourcelist enabled/disabled, Rainbow, and best of all, [Hydrogen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen)). What’s more, I added other things like a few colorstop methods (and a bug fix)… but you weren’t interested in those, now, were you?

Back in April I submitted my application for Apple’s [student scholarship](http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/students/index.html) to [WWDC](http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/). Later last month I got word that I’d been selected. Over the weekend I made [hotel](http://www.thepickwickhotel.com/) reservations for me and a [friend](http://joeyhagedorn.com/).

I remember having a smashing time at last year’s conference. There were a number of sessions which piqued my interest, a few which I had to miss (and hope to make up for this time around). Throughout the whole week there was rarely a lack of discusion, what with the whole Intel transition thing going down, but most importantly, that week at WWDC let me sit back and focus on mac development (which had been the first time in a while), it let me jumpstart the personal projects that I had left waiting in the wings, and allowed me gain the momentum I needed to continue those projects months after. My only regret is that this year I’ll be attending at the closing of the summer as opposed to the opening of the same.

…So this August expect me to be in San Francisco. If you expect to be thereabouts as well go ahead and [drop](/about) me a line.

In keeping with tradition I will once again make another terribly delayed post…

About a month and a half ago I got out of school and began my summer in earnest. As with last year, I made my way to sunny California and to another internship in the Bay Area. Since then I have managed to stay fairly busy both with work and also with several other things, which I hope to write about later. Needless to say, I’ve been enjoying myself thus far, and don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Here are a few pictures from my journey out to the west coast:

*Last* Thursday my family and I went to the [Chase Auditorium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Tower_%28Chicago%29) in Downtown Chicago. Went to see one of the weekly tapings for [Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!](http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/).

Wait, Wait, “The NPR News Quiz” is one of my favorite public radio shows. It’s on my short list along with [This American Life](http://www.thislife.org/), [Left, Right & Center](http://www.kcrw.com/show/lr), and [A Prairie Home Companion](http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/).

The format for the taping is (roughly) audience intro, show taping, outro, and retakes (where they redo some parts of the dialog), followed by a Q&A. The taping is a while longer than what actually airs (what with station breaks, etc.). So there’s a fair bit that gets edited out for the show that goes out over the radio that weekend.

Now, while it’s true that seeing the production of the show [spoiled](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_fourth_wall) the illusion that accompanies any good stage act, nonetheless, it was a fun experience that was well worth the while, and one that I would recommend to any [NPR](http://www.npr.org/) fan who finds themselves in the Chicagoland area on a Thursday evening with $20 to spare.

A final note – [here](http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/35/5421096/npr_5421096.mp3) is the show that I watched get taped last Thursday. And [here](http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=121493804) is a link to the *Wait, Wait… Don’t tell Me!* podcast.