How to make a sandwich in Javascript

Michelle, if you're reading this, start getting ready for our open mic duet. Don't even worry about the set list, I'll take full responsibility for picking the songs I like. Here's some that you might want to learn how to sing:

by Wings:
Let me roll it
Band on the run

by Blue Oyster Cult:
Burning for you
Take me away
Astronomy

by Led Zeppelin:
That's the way
D'yer M'ker
Houses of the Holy

by Dusty Springfield:
Son of a preacher man

by Save Ferris:
Come on Eileen (their cover rocks, you play the power chords, I'll practice the crazy ska rhythm)

by Squeeze:
Tempted

by Bogushevskaya:
Cafe Ekipazh

Let me know which ones you don't absolutely love so I can convince you otherwise. Everyone else go listen to these and imagine how well they'd sound if they sounded slightly worse. Pretty fantastic? Agree.

One and a half more days of freedom and then my favorite girl will be back to torture me. I need to think about what kind of things I can do now that I can't when she's around. Other than tell vicious lies on this blog with impunity, or sleep with other women. I guess I should get all my bad singing, bad drawing, and bad dancing out of the way so she doesn't have to do too much criticizing right after a hard week's rocking in Korea.

And now, a cool trick from today's JavaScript camp. I've used this before, but never in the general form:

function partial(fn) {
var args = [].slice.call(arguments, 1);
return function() {
return fn.apply(null, args.concat(arguments));
};
}

What this allows you to do is precreate functions when you know some arguments ahead of time. So for example, if you have a sandwich function:

function sandwich(bottom, top, middle) {
return {
bottom: bottom,
middle: middle,
top:top
}
}

...and you know a "good" sandwich always has a pancake on the bottom and a pop-tart on top, you can make yourself a shortcut function easily:

var goodSandwich = partial(sandwich, 'pancake', 'pop-tart');

This essentially hardcodes the (bottom, top) set of parameters and gives you back a function that expects only one parameter - 'middle'. So now you can use the goodSandwich function to make sandwiches with different contents but the same shell:

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'turkey')
var goodTurkeySandwich = goodSandwich('turkey');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'Mark')
var goodMarkSandwich = goodSandwich('Mark');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'cheeseburger')
var goodCheeseburgerSandwich = goodSandwich('cheeseburger');

// equivalent to sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', sandwich('pancake', 'pop-tart', 'cheeseburger'))
var doubleDecker = goodSandwich(goodSandwich('cheeseburger'));

Mm, a cheeseburger wrapped in two pancakes and two pop-tarts. That'll get you bulimic in no time.

Coffee and Astronomy

I'm not a very loyal addict. My half-pound of coffee arrived today and my brain is steeping in a comfortable brown bath. I'm not even thinking about chocolate anymore. I am most certainly not thinking about warm gooey chocolate brownies fresh from the oven, of dipping Hershey's kisses in gnutella and then in fondue while surreptitiously scouting out the premises to finagle a moment of privacy in which to take the fondue head on, literally, or ripping off all my clothes and jumping into Willy Wonka's chocolate pool and seeing if my lungs can extract oxygen from liquid chocolate. If they can extract it from liquid oxygen, I don't see the problem. Coffee is fantastic.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone is getting a little more exciting, though I can't shake the quasi-guilty feeling of reading something that may or not be quasi-pulpish. The only thing I can say for sure about it is that I'm still reading it. But I may reread The Name of the Wind when I'm done. Meanwhile in Lamb, Jesus is making friends with the abominable snowman. Biff has just proposed the theory of evolution to him and Jesus rejected it even faster than he did Biff's theory of universal stickiness (gravity). Good fun.

As soon as this entry is done, we're going to watch The Matrix. It's been a couple years since I saw it last, so pile on the shaming. My dad may disown me if he reads this and believes it. Mom will have to raise me all on her own, and the four of us (my sister will also be present) will have dinner together occasionally and talk to each other through her.

Dad (to Mom): honey, will you tell my former son to pass the salt?
Mom rolls her eyes
Me: It was only one time! For two years! How long are you going to punish me for this!?
Dad (to Mom): what are we watching after we finish this glorious dinner?
Mom: ...The Matrix?
Dad: and who's not invited?
Sister crosses fingers, hoping it's her

Speaking of epic, for those of you who are always complaining about hearing Stairway to Heaven in every corner of the room, listen to Astronomy by Blue Oyster Cult. It was my go-to track for short distance running, the two times I subjected the local gym's treadmill to that kind of unholy contrast between awesomeness and mediocrity.