Entries in Life

This past weekend I bought a car from Eric’s wife, Shana, and spent some time hanging out with Eric, Nate and Patrick.  I won’t be doing that again! Just before I left, Eric brought out his Sphygmomanometer and let Nate use it.  He and Patrick both got readings that neither found out of line, so I decided to try it.  On the first try, my blood pressure measured something like 186/101.  Shocked, I quickly took another reading.  160/101.  Hrm… Maybe I wasn’t using it right.  I adjusted the fit and tried again.  Back up above 180. Now, I know I am overweight, don’t get enough exercise and probably inherited a tendency to high blood pressure, but this was ridiculous.  The three other guys took turns giving me advice on getting it down and telling me not too worry, I couldn’t be that bad off.  Just before I left, I half jokingly said I’d try the sphygmomanometer at my local Wal-Mart. I had enough time on the drive back home to mull it over that I drove straight to the Wal-Mart.  When I got there, I took a couple of readings that hovered around 140/90.  Not great, but much better than 180! Today, I tried again.  127/73 (pulse under 60).  Phew!  It must be the company I was keeping. I’ll try again tomorrow on yet another sphygmomanometer.  I’ll get this thing below 100, yet!

After I first saw libnotify with ircII, I thought “I can do that in Emacs!” This past weekend, I finally got around to doing it. (Note that for this demonstration, I send myself a stupid message from… ircII.) Here’s the magical bits:

(defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-last '(0 0 0))  (defvar mah/erc-nick-ntify-delay '(0 5 0))  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-cmd "notify-send")  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-icon    "/usr/share/icons/default.kde/48x48/apps/edu_languages.png")  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-timeout 10000)  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-urgency "low");  (defvar mah/erc-nick-notify-category "im.received");    (defun mah/erc-nick-notify ()    "Notify me when my nick shows up.  This function should be in  the insert-post-hook."    (let ((now (current-time)))      (when (time-less-p mah/erc-nick-notify-delay                         (time-since mah/erc-nick-notify-last))        (setq mah/erc-nick-notify-last now)        (goto-char (point-min))        (when (re-search-forward               (concat "^\\("                       "\\(<\\([^>]*\\)\>\\)" ; <someone>                       "\\|"                       ;; Don't match if we're saying something                       "\\(\\* " (regexp-quote (erc-current-nick)) "\\)"                       "\\)"                       "\\(.*"                       (regexp-quote (erc-current-nick)) ".*\\)")               nil t)          (let ((msg (concat                       (when (> (length (match-string-no-properties 2)) 0)                        (concat "<b>&lt;" (match-string-no-properties 3)                                "&gt;</b> "))                      (match-string-no-properties 5))))            (shell-command (concat mah/erc-nick-notify-cmd                                   " -i " mah/erc-nick-notify-icon                                   " -t " (int-to-string                                           mah/erc-nick-notify-timeout)                                   " -u " mah/erc-nick-notify-urgency                                   " -c " mah/erc-nick-notify-category                                   " -- "                                   "'" (buffer-name) "'"                                   " '" msg "'")))))))