vakkotaur | Weight, IRC scripting

I've managed to use the treadmill regularly so far, as well as eat less fattening meals for the most part. This has had a few effects.

One is that I'm tired earlier and thus more likely to go to bed when I should rather than stay up too late. This actually helps the next day some as I seem a bit more awake - without benefit of caffeine. Another is that I am actually starting to look forward to using the treadmill and feeling a bit odd when I don't use it.

But the big one is that the last few days I've been around 218 lbs. That is under 220 and thus I've already achieved my first objective. Hopefully that trend can continue and the numbers will go down (and certain clothes will fit better again). Next objective: Be under 215 lbs. by the end of February. That shouldn't be too hard. I have no idea what the ultimate weight will or should be. Yes, I know there are charts and such, but they seem wildly off. One indicated 140 and that seems too low. And really, getting under 190 would be an accomplishment. But first things first. Under 215 before March.

So far it's actually been pretty easy. The time on the treadmill is a nice break where I can just sorta mentally idle, as well as listen to tapes and CDs. Supper is a bit less random, tending to be something from Subway, at least when I'm alone. I should vary it some, probably with some stuff at home (hello Chef Magnetron...) and lighter fair when going out for supper.

I'm learning the basics of mIRC scripting and finding it... irksome. It's probably just that's I'm new to it and all, but some is rather irksome. I started with a rather complex idea but set that aside upon realizing just how involved it would get. But while looking into it I found a neat command that gave me an idea. The command allows the color of a nick in the nicklist of a channel to be custom color. This, in itself, seems like it'd just candy-color things and get annoying. Well, in the wrong hands it would. I like to think that mine are not the wrong hands.

What I'd like to do is write a script that sets the color of the nicks according to if they're /away (or maybe idle for a certain time). This would give mIRC a feature that many other IRC clients have built-in.

Getting the away information will likely be the hard part, but right now I'm not even that far. I can get the number of channels and loop through the channels, so far just echoing to screen. I can get the number of nicks in a channel, but either I'm missing some subtlety of variable usage or how mIRC's while( ) loops work. Right now if I set the loop with a fixed number, it works - but that's not the desired thing. I should be able to set a variable to number of nicks in a channel and use that variable in a loop, to echo the nicks. So far, no luck. But I've only been at this a short time. What bugs me is that the various sites that try to explain things say the same few, and generally useless, things over and over.

What isn't explained is how some commands act when not just so. What is the failure mode? That would help quite a bit, I think. Also, what are common mistakes? I'm pretty sure I'm making those as I go. And then the more advanced, is there a way to snarf whois info and parse it, but not spam any window (not even status) with the result? And not break the typed whois? I suspect all these questions have been answered (and I'll likely see them as "D'oh! That should have been obvious!") but I haven't found out where. So far the mIRC help file itself is the most useful thing - which is quite surprising as most help files are anything but helpful. It's good, but not great. Just how does one actually use /halt for example? Maybe I don't need it, but it seemed to be one of those things only makes sense if you don't need the explanation.

And chances are someone already wrote a script like the one I'm thinking of, but 1) I don't know about it and 2) I'd prefer a script I've written, that way I know what it's really doing and 3) I might just learn enough to do something else useful.