Pain

...I should tell you that "pain" means bread, not pain.

Leet

I have lots of time to code here. I wrote a simple, yet effective, function that converts a C-Style string into leet. Here it is:

void leet(char *theString)
{
 for( int i = 0; i < strlen(theString); i++)
 {
  switch( theString[i])
  {
   case 'A':
   case 'a': theString[i] = '4';
      break;
   case 'E':
   case 'e': theString[i] = '3';
      break;
   case 'I':
   case 'i': theString[i] = '1';
      break;
   case 'O':
   case 'o': theString[i] = '0';
      break;
   case 'P':
   case 'p': theString[i] = '9';
      break;
   case 'S':
   case 's': theString[i] = '$';
      break;
   case 'T':
   case 't': theString[i] = '7';
  }
 }
}

Medieval Village

We went to Sarlat today, a completely medieval village about an hour and a half away. I've never seen so many thousand year old buildings in one place before. Medieval ally ways are cool. We also saw the Largest Truffle in the World: To Joseph: I know you're getting tired of medieval France, so to refresh your mind, here's something different: I'm making a C++ string class that has a few Nice Little Methods. I know there's already a built-in string class, but I wanted to make my own. :P

The Castle

Well, I said I'd post if we encountered a castle, so here it is: The castle walls and the tower in the background The tower as seen from the courtyard The view from the top of the tower Facing the other direction The tower was built in the 14th century to defend against the British, and the rest of the castle was added on two hundred years later. I didn't count the stairs to the top of the tower, but there were a lot. And they were really, really steep. There was a really cool view from the top though. There were also a suit of armor, swords, and other Various Items worth posting here, but it would take too long to upload all the images on a dial-up connection.

Our Arrival in France

The airport at Bordeaux The flight from Portland to Atlanta was four and a half hours, and we were flying a Boeing 767 (that was the first time I had seen Delta use anything other than Airbus). I got to check my email in Portland, but there was no wifi in Atlanta! At least there was a power outlet, so I got to charge my PowerBook a little. Our plane took off for Paris at 9:30pm (GMT -0500). It was a Boeing 777! There were TV screens on the back of each seat, a game controller embedded in the armrest, and engines big enough for a car to fit in. We were served dinner and breakfast. At 11:15pm (GMT -0800; I don't know what time zone we were in at that time), I saw the sun just rising over some mountains. The mountains were Iceland. I knew it was Iceland because it was in the direction it should have been, and that was just about the only land the sun was rising over in the whole Atlantic ocean. It would have been about 450 miles away, but you can see a lot from 37,000 feet up. We landed in Paris at 11:40am (GMT +0100) yesterday after a nine hour flight, and then we took an Airbus A318 to Bordeaux. Then we drove two hours to get to our house. We had to stop at the grocery store because we didn't have any food. We're staying in a hamlet with a barn from the 13th century! Everything is made of stone. There are three huge fireplaces, each with a stove in them. The stairs are really steep, so you have to be careful going down them. There's only a dial-up connection here, but luckily I haven't been getting as many emails as I usually do. But I still probably won't be posting very many blog entries unless we encounter a castle or such. Sorry the photos are bad quality; I don't have access to my iDisk, so I'm having to upload them to Blogger.

PDX

We're at PDX now, and boarding in about five minutes. We'll be flying to Atlanta, then to Paris, then to Bordeaux, and then taking a two hour drive to the place we're staying at. More later.

Leaving for France

We're leaving for France tomorrow morning, and we'll be back September 30th. Since CompuServe (the only way we have to connect to the internet in foreign countries right now) works with pretty much anything but Tiger, I'll be using my dad's computer to connect to the internet, so I might not be able to respond to emails immediately. I'll try to post some pictures while we're in France.

Virtual Family Picture

We had our annual family picture today, but since Uncle Rick's in Japan, we just had a video chat with him and included my PowerBook in the picture!

Last Swim Practice + Trip to Morton

We had our last swim practice of the season today. It started at 7:30 instead of 6:30, so we got to sleep in. We played Water Polo, Colors and Sharks and Minnows the whole practice! It was really fun. This will have been my last practice until October even though it starts back up again on September 6th, because we're coming back September 30th. We're leaving for Morton, Washington today till Monday, for Loggers Jubilee. I might post some pictures.

The Conversion Begins

It has begun. I'm converting all my sites to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, starting with www.michaelcurtisford.com. This site might take a while -- not because of size, but because... It's all using absolute positioning! I'm going to have to fix that. I wasn't a very expericenced web designer when I first coded this site.

Marware Sportfolio I

My new Marware Sportfolio I will be really useful when we go to France. It has lots of pockets, so I can store various Other Devices in it with my PowerBook. It also has a shoulder strap, which is convenient.

Oregon State Time Trial Championships

My bronze medal Isa on the left, me on the right Today was the Oregon state cycling time trial championships. For me, it was 10k. My time was 17:51, which is a 1:07 improvement from my time last year. I got 3rd out of six people; the guy who got 1st won his age class at Nationals, and he got 15 minutes and something today, breaking the course record by over a minute. I think I averaged about 22mph -- it was something around 25 on the way down and 20 on the way back, because of the wind. I tried to get off my bike after I finshed, and my legs collapsed. I guess that means I went hard enough.

Mighty Mouse: Arrived

My Mighty Mouse arrived today! I was waiting for FedEx to come, so I checked my Package Tracker widget, and it said it had been delivered, so I went to check, and there it was. It has only one button, but it senses where your fingers are so it works as a two-button mouse. And the scrolling ball is really convenient, as well as the squeezy things on the sides. Well worth the price.

Mighty Mouse

Behold, the Mighty Mouse. I ordered one as soon as I saw it on the Apple web site. Two, actually: one for my PowerBook and one for the Power Mac G4 upstairs. This is going to be great.